Yep. We are cleaning out my FIL’s house in Indiana, and planning to move a circa-1950 **Crosley Shelvadore **back to our house in Arizona. Photo here:
It has been running without problems since purchased new. It lives in a nice cool basement where it keeps my beer cold for when we are there. However, we are selling the house, and it has been decided to bring the Crosley back to my man cave.
Anyone have any hints on moving it? It has been unplugged for a couple of months, and I know not to plug it back in after moving until it has “settled” a few days. My biggest fear is just getting the pig up the basement stairs. Once out of the basement, I’ll put it into the container we are hiring.
I’m probably crazy to try this, but I’ve got room in the container, so what the heck? Even if we cannot keep it long term, I have a friend who wants it, and I’ve seen similar fridges bringing some serious $$.
Anything I need to think about to ensure it’s survivability?
I really need to ask my dad about this. He helped ship a similar fridge to Germany. My folks have some friends there that visited the US a few years back and they saw the old fridge in the basement. They said, at the time, that such items were a fad in their area. So dad helped them find another here in town. I think it went through Houston.
Actually, I’m not so sure about that. It’s overbuilt, and doesn’t have the frost free feature and all the other doodads. The freezer portion is tiny, maybe a cubic foot(?). It might use less, especially if we keep it loaded and chugging away. I seriously doubt it exceeds the power consumption of my 2004 GE. It would be interesting to find out the actual useage of each.
I found a quote on the 'net indicating that a 1950’s era GE refrigerator consumed about 3.5 Kwh/day, or nearly 1300 kwh/year. I couldn’t find the stats on your particular model.
It will use more electricity than a modern fridge because it has a much bigger compressor. The bigger compressor will run a lot quieter than a small modern one. You end up spending a couple bucks a week for a significantly quieter room.
Update: The Shelvador was emptied, defrosted, de-shelved, and remained unplugged for 48 hrs before the move. Three guys pushed the thing up 7 steps with a big dolly, tilting at a minimum. It was packed into a moving container, with old pillows and wads of sheets, and is working its way across the plains. First thing loaded, last thing unloaded when it gets here.
I gave my brother my old fridge some years ago. When he fired it up, which would have been some months after I last had it powered, it didn’t work. No cooling. The coolant pipe had developed a leak by rusting somewhere. The moral is to not leave it idle a long time cause that lets the rust attack.
Is that the kind with the door that can’t be pushed open from the inside? During my broke days we had one of those in a house I shared. My dad liked to tell me stories about kids climbing in them to hide and suffocating when they couldn’t get out. When you do eventually trash it, take the door off so that can’t happen at the junkyard.
However, we are selling the house, and it has been decided to bring the Crosley back to my man cave.
