Weekly Maintenance for your Home

March – Week 10

Just like preventative maintenance on your car, if you take care of a few small items around the house every week, you can avoid many emergency breakdowns and expensive repairs.

Appliances

If you have never done this maintenance task before, you are in for a surprise. It is best to get someone to help you. I want you to pull your refrigerator into the room. Check "Moving Appliances" for some help with getting it to slide away from the wall. Not only will you need to clean up the floor, collect the objects which have fallen behind, but I want you to vacuum off the condenser coils that you find on the back side of all refrigerators and freezers. If you have never done this before, you will be a bit shocked at what you find.

Why clean the coils? Refrigerators and freezers work by letting their heat out through those coils. If they are clogged with dust, they are less efficient at doing their job of cooling the inside. That makes the compressor work harder, takes more energy and shortens the life of the appliance. Some people report that they can hear that it simply runs for shorter periods of time after cleaning.

Once a year, and you will have a happy fridge.

Newer refrigerators have hidden these coils behind a sheet metal covering both to protect them and to make it all look neater.  Unfortunately it is difficult to properly clean the grills but you can vacuum the top where the dust settles in to do it some good. I really wonder if these modern energy efficient refrigerators aren't loosing their efficiency over the years due to dust collection that we can reach anymore!