Remember When

That definitely looks old. Does it still work?

Quote: Pacomartin

We still have one of the fairly rare three door monitor refrigerators from before 1930 in the kitchen

I understand it likely ran on ammonia gas in those days, does this one?

what I mean is no Freon or modern substitute but uses NH3 gas to cool the insides using a compressor of course

I understand commercial operations still use NH3. In the home, I hear tell you would likely smell the ammonia in an old fridge... not safe I guess. So evidently the NH3 is corrosive

Quote: odiousgambit

what I mean is no Freon or modern substitute but uses NH3 gas to cool the insides using a compressor of course

I understand commercial operations still use NH3. In the home, I hear tell you would likely smell the ammonia in an old fridge... not safe I guess. So evidently the NH3 is corrosive

My RV fridge rocks
Love it
I never ever buy ice. Makes plenty for me
But
I do have to defrost the fridge time to time

Quote: odiousgambit

what I mean is no Freon or modern substitute but uses NH3 gas to cool the insides using a compressor of course

I understand commercial operations still use NH3. In the home, I hear tell you would likely smell the ammonia in an old fridge... not safe I guess. So evidently the NH3 is corrosive

Many large premises, ice plants, ice rinks, refrigerated factories use ammonia because it is cheap. Any leaks though are likely to cause fatalities and the trend today is back to other gases in the freon family. Not all freons are banned. Small commercial fridges such sliding glass door coolers often use propane as the coolant now. Domestic fridges mostly use Freon 134-A a freon that doesn't damage the ozone layer.

Quote: odiousgambit

Quote: Pacomartin

We still have one of the fairly rare three door monitor refrigerators from before 1930 in the kitchen

I understand it likely ran on ammonia gas in those days, does this one?

yes, this refrigerator is pre-freon. In 1930, General Motors and DuPont formed Kinetic Chemicals to produce commercial quantities of Freon in 1931. This house was built before 1930. Ammonia is considered quite dangerous and I think disposal will be difficult.

General Electric sold over a million "Monitor-Top" refrigerator by 1927 but very few residential ones had more than 2 doors. The home was built as a luxurious country retreat, but the owner lost all of his money on Black Monday, October 28, 1929 when the stock market crashed. He ended up selling it before he could ever live in it.

Quote: rxwine

I'm very familiar with at least half of a garage ending up as a storage area.

The only thing I will ever store in the garage I built this summer is my 55 lb aluminum Werner step ladder because it's convenient to have it so close to the house rather than in the 1000 square foot barn I have which it is at least 100 feet from the house down the hill. Best thing I ever did was in 1993 to build that barn. They dropped off the pieces and it took the rest of the summer to put it up. It's been invaluable as a workspace and storage space and you could even live in it if you had to.

thanks for the interesting responses

Einstein and a collaborator invented a refrigerator evidently less efficient but less dangerous. Freon came soon after so for this and other reasons including the Great Depression it was not successful. The wikipedia article relates an incident where the standard ammonia-using fridge killed a Berlin family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein_refrigerator

Rob Schneider is still around????????
I thought his career was dead
Well, what's left is now really dead

https://etcanada.com/news/925047/social-media-mocks-rob-schneider-for-saying-he-would-absolutely-sacrifice-his-career-for-his-right-wing-political-beliefs/

Remember when you would go to the movies and the film would break. It would invariably happen in a key point in the movie. Big clatter and film melting on screen. Five-minute break while they spliced the film and then back to the movie. Now the projectors are just giant overhead projectors, and everything is digital.

When the movie was finished its run the projectionist would but the metal cans of film outside and they would sit there allnight waiting for pick-up in the morning.
That was when the default position for people was honest.