Americans like changing temperatures of spaces by blowing air into that space on various temperatures. I have no idea why they're so obsessed with this solution... The air conditioner works that way, we all know that, but the rest of things work differently in Europe than in the US. And I tend to feel, that Europe does it right...
Central heating to Europeans means that there's a furnace/boiler somewhere that heats water. The furnace can be in the apartment/house, or part of a bigger network. Maybe a power plant just outside the city. The water then circulates in pipes and it goes into the radiators heating them up, which will eventually heat up the space they're supposed to. Requires a house not made of paper, insulated walls and windows and doors that actually close tight. Efficient, nice, quiet, no dust. In the USA, central heating still has a furnace, but air is blown through it, which then will exchange the air of the rooms through the registers in the wall or floor. It's a very nice way of bringing a bit more dust into our lungs. Plus it's quite loud. I personally cannot sleep with the heating on. We have portable electric heaters in the bedroom because of that for night time. Remember, if you switch of the heat, you have a half an hour before your home cools completely down.
Now here comes this:
First I wondered why there is a fan in the fridge, too, but then this thought disappeared. Well yesterday I noticed that our freezer is working fine, but the fridge below is not cold enough even though we turned the dial earlier that day to make it even cooler. So before calling our landlord to tell him the fridge is broken, I
googled the phenomenon.
How an American fridge works: the cooling unit is in the freezer. Together with the fan I mentioned earlier. It has a sophisticated microchip controlled thermostat to control temperature everywhere...
LOL! Hell no!
The dials to adjust the temperature are simple plastic latches. You turn it to not too cold, it closes the way of cool air, if you say cold please, it opens all the way up. The fridge gets the cool from the freezer, too. There's a small hole through which the excess cold air arrives downstairs.
Now, since the top was fine for us, but the bottom was not, our problem was exactly the same thing experts said in the above linked forum entry: ice. When we bought our first bag of ice, the bag was too big, and once the fridge door remained open (only half an inch though) for about half an hour to an hour before we noticed. Ever since the ice was building up even though both our freezer and fridge is self thawing. The excess ice thaw into water, which then was frozen back to ice while it was making its way down the dropping pipe. At the same time, the little hole between the freezer and the fridge was also blocked with ice. Therefore the fridge was not cold enough.
Since the thing was full, I didn't want to wait a day until the ice melts. So threw everything from the freezer to my brand new (previously purchased) family sized plastic cooler, removed the back panel in the freezer so I could get to the heat (or rather cold) exchanger part. A hairdrier and about 15-20 minutes of blowing hot air on the radiator solved the problem. Most of the ice melt, the dropping pipe got unclogged along with the hole down to the fridge.
Plugged back in, and put all the things back. In the morning the milk was cold again. Sophisticated technology, now isn't it?!
Now somebody should tell these folks that air is actually a substance that does not conduct heat but insulates.
