Norcold, ambient temp. vs. water temp.

[Lee and Kay]

I have a 2006 Norcold Series 1200 four door refrigerator that is not keeping foods cold. It is at the dealer being checked the test described below has been run continuously for the last 7 days. The refrigerator has 0 deg. in the freezer and 47 to 48 deg. ambient (air) temperature in the food box. The refrigerator is plugged into shore power.

The dealer loaded the refrigerator with two cases of bottled water. They removed the cap from one bottle, inserted a meat thermometer in the open bottle of water. The water temp is 38 degrees or 9 to 10 degrees less than the ambient temperature. I tried the same procedure on my residential refrigerator and got an ambient temperature of 38 deg. and a water temperature of 38 deg. which is the temperature setting for the refrigerator.

How does the Norcold get this type of results?

[Ed-Sommers]

Ambient temperature is the temperature that surrounds your refrigerator, most commonly called room temperature.

The temperature inside the box can only be measured while the door is closed, if you want a reliable reading, or by taking a reading from something that is inside the fridge, if the door is open, like a bottle of water.

When you open the door, ambient temperature air rushes in to replace the cold air that falls out of the inside of the fridge. It's common for RVers to state that it takes hours for the fridge to recover from the opening of the door, but in reality, that's true only if the fridge is empty. If the fridge is loaded, like a couple cases of water, the temperature of the air will, in a very short period of time return to the temperature of the items in the fridge.

In short, it sounds as if you have no problem.

Ed

[Lee and Kay]

The service manager used Ambient when he was referring to the temperature inside the refrigerator. The inside refrigerator temperatures were measured using wireless digital thermometers placed inside the refrigerator. My thermometer is on the top shelf of the food box next to the left side of the fins. The dealers thermometer is on the right side of the second shelf. The temperature inside the motorhome gets to 108 to 112 during the days it has been tested. The last time we used the refrigerator it had inside temperatures of 40 to 52 degrees with the A/C running.