Fridge at 41°F - safe or not?
Heya! So I've got a new fridge, a GE GTS22KGNRWW 21.9ft³. Skipping over the fridge water line bursting and causing thousands of dollars of damage followed by the fridge crapping out, we're just trying to make sure the fridge is OK before the warranty expires and because we have a baby in the house.
The ambient air was still above 41°F a few hours after we got it, so I cranked it to full blast and put a glass of water in to have a better testing point. The ambient air has been fluctuating between like 39-44° F and the water glass measured between like 39.0°-41.0° F after about 24 hours with occasional use. I know I'm worrying because the last fridge just crapped out and spoiled a ton of food, and I know opening the door always causes it to drop (which I'm obviously doing to test it), but it seems kind of high to me for a brand new fridge if 41 is really the upper limit. Is this an acceptable range, or should we ask for someone to come out and look at it?
I would personally not be ok with it - the FDA says it should be at max 40°f, so having to crank it down to the lowest to get 1 degree above that is suspicious.
However, it could be your methods of measuring or the thermometer itself. Is this a built in thermometer? Do you have a second one that can corroborate?
It's a pretty dumb fridge, so we have an ambient air/humidity temp monitor that's been sitting in the fridge on a shelf and then I'm using a meat thermometer to test the water. The water was, lowest, 39°F after the night. This is it right now.
Update - We swapped out the fridge for the same model from Lowes this morning, which was free. Been monitoring, even only 13 hours after turning on it's staying between 36-38°F. Hopefully we're good now!
EDIT: 35°-38° through the night!
If the fridge is completely empty, that may also have an effect. Ironically, they work better, the more stuff is in them. That may just be for maintaining temp better, and not necessarily affect the min/max temps, but I suspect it might have to work harder to keep the entire empty air space at a target temp.
Yeah, I've been trying to keep some stuff in there so it isn't running at empty - a couple water pitchers, some soda, milk, and then some frequently used condiments and whatnot; mostly stuff that isn't super quick to spoil. (We have a second fridge and we're trying not to have a second entire restock...)
This is in fact a major problem. Load it up with bottled water if you have to. Having that extra thermal mass keeps that air temp fluctuation leave less of an impact.
As someone that runs their refrigerator at 33°F, 41°F would be a problem. It sounds like you've already have issues with the unit at this point? If so I'd personally make a warranty claim that it is not cooling.
Wow, 33F is 0.5C, which is just above freezing! I wouldn't be surprised if some of the food actually froze if this is the ambient temperature inside (especially food near the back of the fridge where the refridgerant coil probably is).
I measured our fridge a few times and have it dialed in (not exact temperature as it varies depending on where you measure). I know when I accidentally knock the temperature dial and increase the cooling power it is easy to spot when you pick ie. yoghurt - it is much cooler than it used to be. I believe that the fridge could actually go sub-zero if I dialed it all the way - this is more for OP, it looks they have faulty fridge - and they already went for replacement.
Our refrigerator is good about maintaining a temp when closed, but we have a bunch of kids that like to stand and stare at things and sometimes not close things. Keeping the standing temp just above freezing helps in many aspects in our house.
We went ahead with the claim, yeah - got a replacement coming soonish. Thank you all for the input!
Just popping in to say that a family member recently got a bad intestinal illness. After his piggy cat also suddenly refused to eat his canned food and developed diarrhea he figured out he'd accidentally knocked the fridge thermostat and it was reading around 42F, They are both fine now, but I wouldn't risk it, especially with a baby.
For this reason alone I would consider reaching out to your home warranty company and having someone come out to look at it. You'll have to pay the service fee or deductible no matter what, but they will cover any needed repairs or replacement after.
It really depends on how pricey that deductible is.
This is the fridge's warranty, thankfully, it doesn't have a deductible.