How do indoor refrigerators differ from outdoor refrigerators? Certain elements are added to make a refrigerator suitable for being outside. There are a few environmental issues (like humidity, rain, and...
There are a few environmental issues (like humidity, rain, and water) to be concerned about with anything that is outdoors. So the outdoor refrigerators are all stainless steel, so they don't rust. Because the temperature gets very hot in some areas. They have a cooling capacity that far exceeds what would you see in an inside refrigerator. The compressor simply delivers more cooling. Because of humidity, you get this cool box. Think about what happens to the cold glass of water and how you get condensation. That happens in an outdoor refrigerator, particularly around the gasket area where you get a little bit of leakage. There is no heat around the gasket itself, so we compensate with that by putting what they call strip heaters or electrical heaters around those gaskets to keep the product from condensating. Overall, the design is a little more robust, well able to handle the environmental conditions that you have outside.
Aside from an outdoor refrigerator, people also like to put refrigerators in their garages. That's why we have our Gladiator product. We make a product that's specifically designed to the garages. They have got a galvanized steel exterior and the compressor system is there, the heating system is there, it is able to handle the elements that are seen in the garage situation. They are also designed for the temperature fluctuation you get a garage. You may get colder temperatures so we actually add heat to the product that maintain the proper temperature of a refrigerator and that becomes an issue too. When you are in a garage situation, particularly up North, the temperature of the freezer in the whole industry is zero degrees. All cold freezers are zero degrees. The refrigerator, every one targets about 37 degrees, so when you are in an environment, particularly when you are in the environment of low freezing temperatures, that refrigerator temperature wants to go from 37 down to what that colder point is. If it is 25 degrees in your garage, you don't want to freeze your lettuce. Your refrigerator is going to go from 37 ideally without any heat; it's going to drop to 25. That's why this product, Gladiator, actually adds heat; it's kind of like a Coke machine. Coke machines you see them outside and all year round up North. They actually add heat to the environment to maintain the temperature of a Coke can and that's what we do with the gladiator product lines. Your environment is an issue when placing a refrigerator, it can be an issue because your product. If it's just a normal refrigerator, particularly in the most common cases when you are up North and it is cold out, your refrigerator won't cycle and it can't maintain the temperature of 37 degrees because normal refrigerator won't supply heat to the refrigerator compartment, it only blows cold air. Extreme heat is another issue. There are millions of refrigerators in the southern climate that are in garages. We test our product at both 70 degree ambience, room ambience like a kitchen and we test it 90 degrees ambience, so we also test our products under a more critical conditions. If you operate the product in an area above 90 degrees for any extended period of time, expect the product to run a lot and we can't tell you that it is always going to maintain the proper temperature. It's just not designed for those conditions. There is just not enough cooling capacity at some point to operate effectively.
