The Ice Man Cometh

The Offending Refrigerator

We had an extreme heat day on Tuesday which coincided, or perhaps precipitated, a failure in our fridge.  We had noticed that the fridge wasn't keeping our stuff cold enough over the few preceding days and turned the cold to maximum, but that didn't seem to work, and the milk went off, and we noticed things really didn't seem very cold - and then not cold at all. When Sally was in town in Wednesday night the penny hadn't quite dropped, but I woke up with a startle at around 4AM and realised it was no colder inside the fridge than room temperature.   I put lots of things that I hoped would stand it into the freezer (the fridge and freezer have independent refrigeration units, fortunately, and the freezer was fine).  I also put several bags of ice cubes into the fridge to bring down the ambient temperature. 

Sally returned from an early appointment mid-morning and I transferred everything in the fridge that didn't have to be thrown out (the left-over green chicken curry was a major casualty, along with the new milk and some fruit and veg) into Sally and Monica's fridge downstairs. Meanwhile she got onto the fridge suppliers, who sent a technician out immediately. Not sure if this is their normal response, or it is because this Sub-Zero Fridge/Freezer is their absolute top of the range device (Sally remarked that the fridge, installed in a relatively recent kitchen renovation, cost more than the house!).

He got here before Sally had to leave and diagnosed a loss of refrigerant and the need for a major service, so she authorised the charges and went off while he did the necessary.  So now we have a working fridge again - when we returned home from our day's activities we figured the fridge was back to cold enough to let us relocate everything back upstairs. As you can see, it is full again. One of my yoghurts expanded too much upon freezing and burst out of its container, and tomorrow I will know whether the vacuum-packed NZ lamb survived being not so cold, then frozen - I am defrosting it now and will give it a very through sniffing and visual inspection before considering whether to cook it - and if I judge it fit to cook, will cook it less rare than normal just to be on the safe side.

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