Cleaning Your Refrigerator's Condenser

May's the absolute best time of year to take a quick look under your refrigerator, at least here in ol' Northern PA. By the way guys, if you really want to show her you love her, telling her I said *she's* supposed to do this won't cut it!  

Get the flashlight, lay on the floor in front of the refrigerator, pull off the toe-plate, look underneath and say something like, "ah, yes, just as I expected". 

(Note there are a few - Maytag products mostly - that require back cover removal to clean the inlet of their 'jelly-roll' shaped coil)

Then get out the vacuum cleaner and give that coil a good cleaning. Crevice tool (the flat one, guys) and a long condenser brush are the way to go. Be careful not to run the vac tool or brush into the fan blade - this is easy to do on some models.  And needless to say, never, never do this when the unit's plugged in or when she's not home to see you do it!  I can't guarantee you'll hear her say "my hero!" or anything, but it sure doesn't hurt when we save the girls some dirty work once in a while.

OK, enough marriage counseling - I digress. There are still a few refrig's out there with condensing coils hanging on the back of their cabinets, and if this describes yours, wonderful! You will never have the pleasure of doing what the rest of us get to do every year or so. (You can still lie on the kitchen floor and pretend to do something useful, but be sure she doesn't read this newsletter).

Seriously, a refrigerator can almost be heard whispering "thank you" after this is done (your electric company, however, will whisper something quite different because they just lost revenue).

The preceding article is an excerpt from the May 2002 DRSNews. 
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