Energy Saving Tip - Vacuum Your Fridge

Here’s a little tip I learned during our long hot summer this year. It seemed that our refrigerator wasn’t cooling so well. Something was wrong with it and I feared it needed to be replaced. However, a quick check of some home repair sites said that it was likely the condenser coils needed cleaning.

The condenser coils are usually found underneath the unit in most modern, full size, refrigerators. You have to pull off the kick plate in the front to see them and some you really have to get down at floor level to see underneath. If you haven’t cleaned it out in a year or so, you’ll see a lot of dust under there. If you have pets like we do, you’ll probably also see a lot of pet hair that managed to worked its way under there somehow. Ours was pretty cruddy under there since I had never heard this tip before.

So I brought out the regular vacuum but its hose and crevice tool couldn’t get under there well. So I brought in my shop vac and used a small hose that I had rigged up a converter for to get in the tight spot. That worked rather well but there was still dust and hair under there. So, I reversed the vac into a blower and blew the rest out. Of course, that had to be vacuumed up but that was minor.

The converter? It was a funnel shaped crevice/blower tool that came with my Sears shop vac that I duct taped a piece of old garden hose to. It was definitely a ‘MacGyver’ job but it worked rather well.

If your old fridge isn’t working so well, check underneath and see if it needs a good cleaning. Chances are it does.

Home and Garden