Let me level with you a second: I’ve been in my house for over 2 years now, and I never once cleaned the coils on the refrigerator. I just didn’t.   I never thought of it, I really didn’t know if the coils were underneath or in the back, and since the fridge is a relatively small energy consumer in my house, I just didn’t worry about it.

Then, one day, I found a device that looks like a giant pipe-cleaner or bottle brush wedged in beside the fridge.  I figured that it must be meant for cleaning dust from the coils, so I got down on the floor, removed the grill, and peered into the warmly humming void.  I poked the pipe cleaner around a bit, and a cloud of dust and debris gently wafted from the hole.  This was not a good sign…

A refrigerator works on the basic principle of compression and expansion.  When liquids evaporate and expand, they cool down and absorb heat.  If you compress a gas into a liquid, it gives off that heat.  Your refrigerator (or the air conditioner you are really beginning to appreciate this week) works on the same principle, except that it expands and compresses the refrigerant in two different places so that it cools the inside of the fridge, and sends the heat to the outside. That’s why the air at the bottom of the fridge always feels nice and warm – it’s pumping heat from inside, via the refrigerant in the coils, to the outside.

It’s also why you should clean those outside coils regularly.  Mine had so much dust built up by years of neglect, that it was basically like putting a fur coat on the hot coils. All of that extra insulation meant that the coils couldn’t emit their heat, so my refrigerator had to run longer and more often than it should.

Here’s a picture of just some of the dust I cleaned from the coils that fateful day.  You can also see my handy cleaner brush. (Note: the actual volume of dust was much greater – this is just what I didn’t vacuum up or inhale during the cleaning process.  I also found a penny, so the ROI for this project was immediate!)

To really drive home the importance of this home-maintenance procedure, I present to you my new Coil Cleaning Campaign mascot.  His name is Dusty and he’s a Scottish Terrier.  I know he’s cute, but please don’t pet him.  He’s absolutely filthy.

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4. Four Factors of Comfort