We took the mini plunge

Hmmm I think a zero is missing somewhere

 

Now *that* would be horrifying

 

I got the LG fridge earlier this week and am still adjusting it, monitoring temps, and recording baseline power usage. So far the power demand is about where I expected for winter, about 6% below the sticker. I'll report on that later...but what has me amused is the section in the manual listing warnings, cautions, and important safety instructions. The basics of the manual are reasonably well translated, but this section is not and stands out as one of the funniest I've come across.

Each of these sections has a short bold description with a follow up explanatory sentence and a cartoon to illustrate the issue. Thank God for the cartoon, because the Asian English would be tough for the average American to understand (I worked a few months in Asia so I have some appreciation of the wording and cadence.) I would never try to write a manual in a foreign language without asking a native speaker to fix my mangled wording...but that does not seem to be something that concerns the Chinese or Koreans (and to a lesser degree the Japanese) when writing manuals for the U.S. market. Not only that, but the French translation appears to be just as bad, the passages I checked were direct translations of the mangled English (or vice versa.)

Here are some examples, first let's start with something that would be a fairly normal discussion in my Asian plant experience:

"Because opening or closing the door of the refrigerator may cause injury to the person around it, be careful, please." (Italics mine, because I've heard this expression various times.)

My favorite is:
"Do not install the refrigerator in the wet place or the place which water or rain splashes."

Those are easy enough to understand, now try this one:
"When you want to dispose the refrigerator, contact to the down-block office. When you want to dispose the large living waste such as electric home appliance and furniture, you'd better contact the local down-block office." (The cartoon is great, as the refrigerator appears to be in R.I.P. repose with hands on its chest and eyes closed.)

And this one is a classic:
"Use the submerged refrigerator after checking it."

More fun:
"Do not cling to the door or the shelves of the door or the home bar of the freezer or the cool chamber. It may make the refrigerator fallen down or damage the hands. Especially, do not allow the children to do the above." (Never fear, the children are not allowed to cling to the home bar...sounds like something Dad might do if he imbibes too freely and the room begins spinning.)

Or:
"Do not allow the power cord bent or pressed by the heavy object to be damaged. It may damage the power cord to cause fire or electric shock."

And then for the academics and industrial lab users:
"Do not store the medicine or the academic materials at the refrigerator. When the material with the strict temperature control is stored, it may be deteriorated or it may make an unexpected reaction to cause any risk."

Okay, there were a few useful parts in this section...such as a listing of the refrigerant as isobutene (R-600a.) That explained several flammability warnings. (EDIT: It appears that the actual refrigerant is isobutane rather than isobutene. The mechanical engineers who do much of the refrigeration work aren't real precise when it comes to chemical nomenclature so you can find it listed both ways online. Makes more sense to me for it to be isobutane, as I anticipate isobutene's unsaturated bond being less stable.)

 

Oh please please please post the cartoons

 

I'll see what I can do. I was going to post a link to the pdf for the manual, but realized that the relevant hard copy pages are missing from the pdf! I read through the pdf manual a bit before purchasing and wondered how I had missed those funny warnings...now I know, they are sort of like Easter eggs for those who have the paper manual.

Speaking of Easter eggs, I have to come up with a name for the refrigerator as a result of the cartoons. After looking through them I noticed that the long vertical handles on the refrigerator section, the wide horizontal handle on the freezer section, and the gentle curvature of the front give the appliance a visage vaguely reminiscent of the giant head statues on Easter Island.

 

Here is my report card for the new French door refrigerator:
8.23 kwh in 168 hours (7 full days/nights), 429 kwh/yr, about 1.18 kwh/day. This is below the energy guide rating, but it is winter. My estimate is that it will use about 460 kwh for the year adjusting for summer months, might be more due to greater ice consumption. The 476 kwh/yr energy guide rating is probably spot on.

This is just over half of what the old smaller refrigerator was doing with freshly cleaned coils in similar weather. I estimate a 437 kwh/yr reduction. Having the refrigerator section on top is resulting in even more usable space, so much so that I have shut down my very old mini-fridge in the garage that has been the ale dispenser. (I'll keep it around to plug in for guests or possibly to convert for lagering.) That's another 200 kwh/yr reduction.

And I can go back to normal size condiments again...the old side-by-side lacked the door shelf space for all the condiments we use and I had been stuck buying slightly undersized condiments at higher unit prices. (One benefit of the lack of space was that I could justify chucking out anything that said "fat free" on the label though--I'll probably miss that.) Plus I can find the leftovers now that were getting lost in the dark lower reaches of the old fridge, lunches just got cheaper.

The thing that probably hurts the efficiency more than anything is the defrost cycle. It seems to burn about 0.25 kwh each day, plus the follow up cooling to remove that heat. I can't help but wonder if the defrost frequency should be lower.

It's quiet. I can't hear it running unless I'm standing beside it.

p.s. jayman, I haven't forgotten about the cartoons!

 

I have an observation about the top vs. bottom freezer issue with respect to efficiency. I suspect that many of the current bottom freezer designs suffer a partial hit because of the way the contents roll out, effectively dumping all the cold air. This differs from stationary top freezer models. When I open the bottom freezer section the perforated rollout basket allows much of the cold air to escape to the floor, while also sucking warm air into the space that was just evacuated, followed by pushing the drawer back in expelling newly cooled air. (I've not read through the Federal Register to get an idea for the testing protocol to see if this effect is captured, though I suspect it is.)

This is an issue that would be hard to address in the design. You really need the rollout on bottom freezer designs, and you also need the openings in the basket for air flow. The two drawer types might compensate for this somewhat (thin upper section.) I doubt that the test protocol would capture the two drawer real world effect--I'll bet it requires X number of all freezer openings per test. On the flipside, in real world use I spent way too much time with the refrigerator door open searching the dark bottom reaches in the old side-by-side and old top freezer model. With the French door model this waste is gone.

There are probably other issues with regards to the refrigeration system's non-ideal compressor/coil placement for bottom freezer, and perhaps additional losses in the French door models because of one extra vertical sealing strip down the center. If one were to combine CFL lighting with a more efficient compressor/coil placement I suspect another 10% reduction would be acheived.

 

I wanna see the funny cartoons!

 

Here they are in a pdf (we'll see how well this works).

I love the "Hello Kitty" type of impact these have. There is an innocence about them that makes them endearing. Still, on page 5 (not included) it says that the "Warning" symbol means that "You can be killed or seriously injured if you don't follow instructions." That is scary enough but even more ominous is the "Danger" symbol that says "You will be killed or seriously injured if you don't follow instructions." It gives the impression that they will send out some sort of scary ninja to do you in if you don't do exactly as they say. (Never mind that this is a Korean outfit, not Japanese.) Our 1994 Accord manual had the same legend for its warning symbols so I always thought of the warnings as part of some sort of samurai code. If only it had cartoons.

Since we got the fridge I've been telling my wife anytime she has technical difficulties to contact the "down-block office."

 

I'm now too scared to go near my fridge and I'm thirsty!

 

Awwwwwwww priceless

I *especially* liked the caption "when gas is leaked" with the fridge having a strained expression and smell arrows wafting up.

I have a similar expression after eating a lot of chili, washed down with a few beers

 

As the cartoons prove, my fridge *is* out to get me!

The neighbors thought I was nutty when I mentioned this last year, now I have proof.

(Maniacal laughter)

 

Tried the 60W equivalent Sylvania micro minis in the fridge. They do fit in the base so that they can make electrical contact, barely, but the yellower hue and light loss compared to a relatively uncoated appliance bulb (esp. considering the colder temp operation) makes this an unattractive option. So I'll be going back to the appliance bulbs.