The last few weeks our ice cream sandwiches have been awful. I’m throwing away ice cream sandwiches, and I’m only marginally pickier than my dog. They’ve been gummy, almost squishy.
We have been suspicious of the refrigerator since we smelled a hot electric odor—like burning dust. I monitored the fridge with the RIMU, and it looked more or less reasonable. I monitored the freezer too, for one night. It is looking less good.
In addition to the short-lived odor, there is another reasons to be suspicious. The fridge gets warm on the outside, notably warmer than it used to.
Normal fluctuation in freezer temperature should be about 5 degrees, measured with a mass-damping technique…that I did not employ. I estimated the air temperature variation, not the food temperature variation. The air temperature variation is larger. The air temperature swings through a larger range than I would expect.
The average temperature, though, looks altogether too high: 16°F. The normal target temperature is 0°F. I’m assuming some of the spikes are because we were accessing the freezer, but they may all be defrost cycles.
We’ll continue fiddling with the temperature control, but likely the freezer is singing its swan song. That’s one note, about 0.25 millihertz.