Say you have a garage refrigerator in Chicago in an extended sub-zero outside temps. Does the food in the non-freezer section of the refrigerator freeze or not? Does the refrigerator just stop working if the outside air is colder than the internal temps it is trying to maintain?
In our mine site, a bottle of cold water has crystal clear sides when taken out of the fridge, whereupon it starts to mist and form droplets after a few minutes.
Yes it can freeze. I had a ‘beer’ fridge outside on a balcony for a number of years when I lived in a small apartment. The fix was pretty easy: I messed with the switch that turned on the fridge light so that it stayed on even when the door was closed. The heat from the little 15 watt? bulb was enough to keep my beer from freezing even in sub-zero weather. Of course I removed the bulb in warmer weather.
Interesting that it was warm enough to keep it from freezing, but didn’t make it unpleasantly warm to drink?
The fridge is just a big insulator, but it has only one method of temperature adjustment, and that’s cooling. Not heating - JerrySTL’s method excepted, of course.
Commercial fridges also heat to maintain the set temperature. I remember visiting a dairy one very cold and frosty morning and the staff were sheltering in the chiller. That was set at a (relatively) balmy +2°C while the outside was at -6°C.
If the little light did warm the interior enough, the fridge would kick in and cool things down. This might be a good thing if you are also storing something in the freezer. If the fridge didn’t kick on sometimes, I could see a problem when the outside temps were in the 30s or low 40s. The freezer section could rise to those temps unless it had its own thermostat.
One other thing to consider is that wasn’t a great way to save on electricity to say the least. You would have a little light bulb on all the time and that would sometimes cause the fridge to kick on. Also you have to open a door to go outside to get a beer or whatever letting in cold or heat into the building. Still I bet it wasn’t much worse than using an indoor fridge.
The light bulb trick is what they do in outdoor soda machines as well. They mount one down by the evaporator fan so the heat circulates up into the rest of the machine. When it gets too warm, the compressor kicks on. In summer you take unscrew the light bulb.
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Duh. Guess I’ll be hanging out in the corner with this fancy cone shaped hat.