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Show Currently i J Speaking?! By Moon Lake Electric Association, Inc. CHECK YOUR REFRIGERATOR FOR EFFICIENCY Your refrigerator consumes an simated 750 to 1,400 kilo-watt-hours of lectrical energy annually. That makes one of the major energy-consuming ppliances in your home. You should heck to see if your refrigerator is perating as efficiently as possible. The Alliance to Save Energy jecommends these steps: Start by examinig the gasket or seal round the refrigerator door to see if old air is escaping. A simple test will f 11 you if the gasket is not doing its job f sealing the door tightly: Close the oor on a piece of paper and try to pull f he sheet of paper out. If you can pull it , ut easily, your refrigerator probably eeds a new gasket. -neck the temperature of your efrigerator, too. Place an outdoor ; (nermometer inside the fresh food lection of your refrigerator and close J he door. After waiting fifteen minutes heck the temperature. It should read etween 38 and 42 degrees F (3 - 6 Agrees C). If not, adjust the tem-; tem-; lerature control. If your refrigerator as a separate freezer compartment, j heck the temperature there, also. It r. hould be around 5 degrees F (-15 agrees C). Colder than necessary cmperatures waste energy. Check the frost buildup in the freezer ompartment. It should not exceed one-luarter one-luarter of an inch. As a general rule, nanual defrost refrigerators take less ;nergy to operate than do automatic fefrost refrigerators, but not if frost is "lowed to build up excessively in the manual model. Your refrigerator should be located away from heat sources such as a range. The motor housing and condenser con-denser coils should be kept clean, and unless your unit is designed to be built in, it should be away from the wall an inch or two to allow air circulation around the compressor. |