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Super bummer I hope they can get their ac back online soon

there are two types of leaks- easy to find and miserable to find. It can be very time consuming.

it can be a bad connection, a leaking line set, a leaking wall unit. Outdoor units extremely rarely leak.

It may not be a leak at all.

not all companies have the energy to chase these problems.

Hopefully they can find a good technician!

On any 1930s and up GE you turn the knob to defrost and go to bed. When you wake up you dump the tray of ice and water into the sink.

It keeps running to maintain temperature but it raises the turn on point above freezing so the frost falls off.

How much time and energy are you going to factor in for that? It's zero energy.....

Regardless,

The efficiency of the refrigeration equipment hasn't changed. The insulation of the cabinet hasn't improved.

And like I said, even the much later ones that do use a lot of power, it's not enough to justify replacing it.

I think the video you're talking about is from a guy named Dusty? He knows his stuff.

I don't know much about 1948 stuff, but I'd guess R12 or similar on something that modern.

No, the really old refrigerators never were energy hogs.

I've had a 1933 GE Monitor Top running in my kitchen for 10 years now and it averages around 30kwh a month running 33-34F. Right next to it is a 1935 GE Ball top which has been running for 4 years, that runs about 18kwh a month and it's used and opened constantly. Most of the mid to late 1930s - 1940s machines use very little power, 1935 is when GE really perfected things. There's usually no fans, and no defrost heaters etc. For what it's worth, we have a 2022 manual defrost mini fridge in the office that uses 20kwh a month, according to energy star but I've never measured it.

Here's the other problem.

What about more modern refrigerators that are "Energy hogs"? I'm picturing 1960s-80s side by side refrigerators etc. What's it going to cost to run, $10-12 a month? The most you're going to save is a few dollars a month at best even replacing a so called hog. Replacing a 1930s-40s refrigerator with new will pretty much always result in quite a bit more power consumption unless something was really wrong with the old one.

OT a bit (and I have two questions at the end), but I have a post war GE that's been running continuously for almost 80 years. The only way I know it's running is because it's always 34F inside..

These old refrigerators are plentiful as they still toil away in basements for overflow or man-cave beer duty while the fancy stainless pile of garbage upstairs gets replaced every 2-5 years - they're all over FB Marketplace and most of them still run.

Talk about a big middle finger to modern "quality". In an age where Chinese compressors struggle to last 5 years, these old motors/compressors run for decades.

Questions: what refrigerant would a 1948 GE use? Also, some guy on youtube allegedly ran an old refrigerator through a wattmeter and he claims it uses no more power than modern ones, at least not significantly. We were told to scrap these even if running because a new refrigerator would pay for itself in energy savings in short order. Are these power hogs as we were told or are they actually close to the efficiency of a modern refrigerator?