appliancesrefrigerator
Recently our fridge broke. We have a working one in the kitchen, standing upright in the same position in the kitchen for 14 years, it just hasn't been plugged in during that amount of time. It's clean inside and out and was working fine last time it was on 14 years ago. I live in Britain so it never really gets that humid here except for a month or so every year in the summer.
Is it safe to use and should I expect any problems with it?
Your compressor is going to look something like this
To test the windings, you'll first have to remove the "box" where the wires connect.
WARNING: There's likely a capacitor in here. Take care not to let the capacitor discharge into you.
Once you've go that out of the way, you should see three pins/terminals. They'll typically be arranged in a triangular pattern.
One terminal will be start, one will be run, and the other will be common. To determine if the windings are still good, you'll simply test the resistance between each terminal.
NOTE: Your readings may vary.
You should end up with something like this.
This tells me that the top pin is common, the lower left is start, and the lower right is run. It also tells me the compressor is still good. The reading from start, to run should always be the largest reading. The readings between start and common, and run and common should total up to the reading from start to run.
If the values are way off, or you get infinite resistance between the pins, replace the compressor.
If the compressor checks out, you'll want to make sure it's getting power.
After reassembling the compressor, plug the refrigerator back in. Set the refrigerator to a setting that should cause the compressor to come on. Using a multimeter set to volts AC (VAC), carefully probe the two wires connected to the compressor. You should measure ~120 volts.
If you get the proper reading, you'll likely have to replace the relay and/or capacitor. If you don't get ~120 V, the problem is in the control circuitry.
If everything checks out, there's still the possibility that the compressor is seized. In which case, you'll have to replace the compressor.
'ben rudgers' is right. There's no analytic solution to your question. A 35 year old fridge is unlikely to operate anywhere near its original design's parameters. You'll have to address this experimentally.
Using a Kill-A-Watt would be ideal. An alternative might be to observe the power consumption of the entire house, with the fridge turned off (turn thermostat off or to the highest temp). Then open the fridge door until you hear the compressor start and observe the power consumption again.
On older whole house power meters, a small metal wheel spun faster when the power consumption went up. If you counted the revolutions per minute with the fridge off, then again with the fridge on, that difference would reflect only the fridge's power consumption. Then you could turn off the fridge and turn on an appliance whose power consumption you know (like a 100 watt lamp or 500 watt hair dryer) to see how fast that makes the meter spin. You could calculate the fridge's wattage based on the ratio of the two spin rates per minute.
I assume that modern house power meters have something similar to that spinning wheel. Or maybe you could log into your power provider's website to check your house's current power consumption and monitor such experimental changes via their virtual meter on the site?
Best Answer
The only safety concern I'd have would be if it was stored some place where critters could have got in and chewed up the wiring. That doesn't seem to be the case here. Plug it in and see if it works.
From a health point of view you should obviously clean it really well.