This goofy fridge has a really clever design. It's also kinda terrible.

"In order to simulate a well-stocked fridge, I stocked my fridge well" Bless this man

I can't wait for the final instalment of this series on the refrigeration cycle where we see Alec build his own refrigerator from scratch. 😂

If this man made a six hour long documentary on the drying properties of different types of wall paint, I'd still watch it.

You made me laugh several times because I would think..."Just add a little fan inside. That will fix it." And then you do. And down the rabbit hole we went together.

Most youtubers are worried they can't hold an audience for 2 minutes, meanwhile you are an absolute legend and trust us to stick with you for an hour. And you are not wrong! Love every second of it!

I just watched an entire 1 hour show on a low budget fridge. I was completely encapsulated by the development of events from beginning to end. Just to find out why it was 1 whole hour. Good job.

This is a scary accurate portrayal of what engineering looks like at times. The chaos also reminds me of my silly idea of someday building a kart with a steering wheel that controls angular velocity of the wheels instead of position.

I’m from the Netherlands, I grew up having fridges very similar to this one. One of the things I was told growing up, was to change the thermostat setting depending on how full the fridge was and definitely not add large quantities of fluids at the same time if the fridge was empty or near empty. Not sure if this was something done in my family specifically or this was something everyone that had similar fridges did. But maybe it was something my parents noticed happened and they adjusted their behaviour to make it better? But yeah, we never really kept food in there long enough for it to go bad I guess.

i am a Refrigeration tech, and I would like to give you some insights, so the type of mechanical thermostat this fridge, (actually the type most small commercial units use) is actually quite interesting. When you adjust the knob your not actually changing the temperature at which the switch closes. It is what's known as a fixed cut in switch, meaning what you are actually changing with the knob is the differential between the cut-in and cut-out temperatures, they are used to essentially make an extremely simple auto defrost. by attaching the switch to only a uniform diameter tube instead of a sensing bulb the pressure the switch sees is the average of the entire tubes length. then by inserting that tube inside the evaporator we get an average evaporator temperature. all you need to do then is calibrate the switch so that it takes an average temperature of 33deg. along its length before it has enough pressure to overcome the snap action and you can be sure the evaporator will defrost entirely every off cycle. Also, as you already found out in your testing, because you are reading evaporator temp and not air temp, when the refrigeration circuit has more BTU capacity than the refrigerator evaporators absorption capacity (a necessity with this series freezer design.) The thermostat will always satisfy before bring the box to the desired temp whenever the thermal load inside the box is larger than the evaporator capacity.

I honestly love how so many of us became so engaged that we watched an hr long video on a shitty low budget fridge is a testament to this channel

I have this EXACT fridge, well, black. Fits perfectly in my 250 sq ft San Francisco studio, and has been a really good fridge so far. The self-defrosting feature has been the best, as my last fridge needed to literally have ice chipped away every month, this thing gets almost no frost, and when it does, it is gone within a day. At least now I understand why the sides get warm :) As far as the temp zones, they can be annoying until you figure the out, then they become useful. I like my fridge colder than usual, but this causes things in the very back of the fridge, especially on the top shelves to freeze, had this happen to eggs. I turned this into a useful feature, anything I want extra cold, such as soda, meats, etc goes on the top near the back. It works out for me personally, but I also have a BAS in Culinary arts, I can see how this could be a headache for someone without cooking experience.

I work fixing fridges in brazil. We've got a lot of simpler fridges that work exactly like this, in fact i'm pretty sure ive seen this same exact thermostat/lamp unit before , altough we don't have galanz fridges. There are also a lot of what are called "frost free" fridges, which are the ones you are probably most familiar with, where the evaporator is on the freezer part only, and a fan circulates the air around and to the fridge part. There are also intermediary ones, like the one from the video but with automatic defrosts from time to time. The r600a refridgerant is also very common (which sucks beacuse the compressors tend to be worse than the older r134a counterparts, usually the piston gets stuck). Also, i think r600a is "heavier"? Because the compressors seem to have bigger hp ratings for the same cooling amount when compared to r134a.

It's not weird that you did an hour long video on a fridge, and it's also not weird that I sat down in excited anticipation to watch it.

It is comforting to know that there is someone else in the world who exerts considerable time and effort on such projects.

Big fan here. I repair fridges for a living, and i really liked this video, it was really fun seeing you figure out what's happening. Here in europe these kinds of fridges are really common. So the thermostat sensor is placed on the middle of the evaporator, the thermostat wont let the compressor start until it is fully defrosted. It is made this way so it wont accumulate frosting in the fridge and the compressors running long periods of time will overheat and can cause the motor coil to get damaged. Keep in mind that these compressors are not that efficient. The temperature issues was solved with a bigger evaporator and a fan placed above it. The fan only runs when the compressor is running and the door is closed. Really nice video

can confirm the chest freezer thing. those units last forever. my great aunt got rid of hers just a few months ago, it was working still, she just wanted to replace it with something more modern and convenient. it was one of the pre-insulation plugs, so it was bought before 1984 at the latest

"Automatic defrost added complexity, and that came with costs. First: cost." Alec, you just... you get me, man.

I love the way you call this a "mini fridge", in the UK we'd call it a "fridge". The large double door units are often referred to as "American fridges" 🤣

i do not own this fridge, nor do i have any interest in refrigeration, but for some reason i watched this whole video and was thoroughly entertained. i appreciate the amount of effort you put into this and i look forward to watching your lava lamp video next. cheers.

You might also need to monitor the temperature of the compressor - it might not be fitted to run for extended periods of time and better thermostat might just kill it faster. Or I might be giving the engineers too much of a credit, but they went through all the troubles of coming up with the original design (I mean, sticking the sensor that deep obviously took some thinking and effort)