Posts Tagged home improvement
Here’s How to Keep Your Fridge Maintained
Posted by admin in House and Home on August 30th, 2010
Fridge Refrigerators are an essential appliance nowadays for almost any home, dorm room or office. The main use for this lovely piece of kitchen equipment is to keep your food fresh for longer periods. The temperatures inside a refrigerator make it hard for bacteria to grow and spoil your food. Of course, they also became the perfect option for those who would like to eat healthy but do not want to run a dairy farm and plant a garden or fruit orchard.
Regular proper maintenance is important to longevity and performance. While this is true of all your kitchen appliances, the refrigerator is even more important because of the nature of the job it performs. Your health could be at stake if food began to spoil in a poorly performing fridge, not to mention the amount of money that would be lost.
Regardless of the brand name, be it a Bosch Fridge or a simple Samsung Fridge Freezer combination there are a few things you should remember when it comes to maintenance. You will get more value for your money in terms of quality performance, longevity and durability.
Proper Placement
The first order of the day should be proper placement of the refrigerator since it will matter the most in the long run. For one thing, you should never place it in an area exposed to heat from both modern appliances like the oven and stove as well as in a sunlit space. Otherwise, the fridge will work harder at cooling itself, thus, leading to higher energy bills as well as sacrifices in longevity.
You will need to check your chosen area to ensure it is level and flat. This prevents inefficient dissipation of temperature in your fridge, which could cause warm spots, and loss of storage area; this is to be avoided at all costs.
When you are talking about energy consumption, it is best if you avoid opening the door too often or too widely. You can save approximately 30% of your energy bill by simply figuring out what you want from inside the fridge and then getting it out rapidly, avoiding opening more than once.
Coil Cleaning
When you want to prolong the life of your fridge, it is necessary to clean the compressor coils. These are generally located at the rear of the unit either top or bottom and some models even have them underneath. Cleaning them is simple, unplug the fridge then move it to where you can easily access the coils, you can then vacuum or brush the dust and dirt away.
Wash Regularly
As with any appliance in your kitchen, you will need to clean the fridge regularly. Get into a habit of wiping the unit down even when it appears to be clean to remove bacteria you cannot see. How often you will need to do this will depend on various factors including where you reside, how many people are in your home and what kind of food you store inside. It is best to use a mild detergent on all exposed surfaces including the door, gasket and interior shelves. It is not a good idea to use bleach on any area of the fridge, even when you have tough stains. Regular cleaning will prevent staining when you get on schedule.
Responsible ownership and maintenance of your refrigerator will pay off in several ways. Not only will your fridge look great in your kitchen but more importantly, your food will be safe. That is what you call optimal performance.
Best Fridge Freezer: Chest or Upright?
Posted by admin in House and Home on August 24th, 2010
At the beginning the major point that should first be emphasized is that it is possible for anyone to find several significant differences between those appliances we call refrigerators and the similar appearing freezers. These said differences should be kept in mind whenever someone wants to choose the Best Fridge or a superior freezer chest appliance. The refrigerator is able to keep an overall temperature that remains just a few degrees higher than the freezing point for water while the freezer chest models and freezer upright models maintain a temperature that registers below 32 degrees.
Two types of freezers are available today and these are the freezer upright and the freezer chest designs. Both types of freezers are able to perform the basic function of keeping food cold enough so that it will remain unspoiled for weeks or months at a time. Freezer owners can store larger amounts of food in a traditional freezer than in the spaces provided by even the best fridge.
You may be wondering how you can determine which style of freezer is best for your home. You can be certain that all freezers have positive and negative features. Your decision as to which one is best should be based on an assortment of factors including the options available, special features, storage space, maintenance, energy efficiency, cost and installation.
Upright Type
Although the Freezer Upright models are usually more expensive, its prices are on the higher end than their chest counterparts. Within the type, prices will differ based on storage systems, convenience features and total capacity. Of course, with each addition to these factors, the price increases, too.
You might pay up to $150 for a freezer that includes a self defrost or frost free option. Consumers should always remember to ask the dealer about this convenient feature since it is not easy to tell which options are available on some of the freezer units.
Even with the higher a freezer upright appliance remains very popular with many households for a number of reasons. The upright style allows consumers to easily organize the stored food items since there are adjustable and removable shelves, baskets and bins that are convenient to reach. The versatility and ease these appliances offer for food storage makes it a great deal easier to use frozen products on a “first- in/first- out” basis.
You can also an upright freezer installed easily since it is handled in the same way as the installation of a refrigerator. A freezer upright model also has a footprint much smaller than the carbon footprint belonging to the chest freezer.
Freezer Type
There are some economical benefits of the Freezer Chest to consider as well. It should be stated that you can use more of the interior space of these appliances because they allow for vertical stacking of stored food. High energy efficiency is also present in a chest style freezer due to the built-in insulation along the freezer walls which will allow food to stay frozen for as long as 72 hours if there is loss of electrical power. Most chest freezers are also considered to be a great deal more durable than comparable upright styles.
It is fairly easy to organize the contents of a standard chest freezer since most models include wire baskets that fit inside the units. The design of a freezer chest also makes it easier to accommodate many odd-shaped food items.
The chest freezer’s main disadvantages are its wider footprint and its difficulty in getting though doors. You have to carefully plan where the freezer will be placed preferably one with sufficient head and floor space.
Making sure the area has sufficient space that allows you to raise the lid properly may also present a hurdle.
