The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California
Kitchens & Kitchen Remodeling
Refrigerators
WHETHER we are going to buy ice or use one of the automatic methods of chilling the house-hold foods and beverages, the first rules for selecting the refrigerator are the same: Choose a good one, a refrigerator made by an established company, a box or mechanism which bears the name of the maker. This is much easier than it seems, for the manufacturers have standardized their productions, improved them, worked on them with organized efforts, so that in all parts of the country fine refrigerators of reputation are to be had, and with them the pamphlets and information which scientists working for the ice industries, for public health groups, and in the universities have prepared for American housekeepers. In no field of home making has such studied endeavor been made to improve the product and insure its proper use as in refrigerator manufacturing.
The housekeeper has learned that it is not the outside of an ice box that counts. A woman's intuition won't help her much in looking at it.
The main points to look out for in choosing a refrigerator are these:
1. Insulation: How are its walls built?
2. Circulation: Can the air flow freely?
3. Size: Not only the whole box in relation to the size of the family, but of the ice compartment in relation to the box itself.
4. Drain pipes and shelves: Are they easy to adjust and clean?
The walls and interlinings of a good refrigerator, the doors and top, should insulate it, cut it off, from the warm outside air. It's not fair to expect 100 pounds of ice to cool the whole outside world. So a poorly insulated refrigerator, however handsome to look upon, is largely an ice-melting plant that wastes ice and does not maintain sufficiently low temperatures.
The ideal is to have a hardwood case about 7/8-inch thick (oak is best) with the equivalent of at least two inches of cork-board between this and the inside lining of porcelain. The reason is that such an interlining not only keeps heat out, but will not absorb moisture, and is rigid, so that it will not sag, leaving air spaces.
Merely wood, paper, and air will not keep the heat out of the refrigerator; such walls leave the ice badly handicapped in its war with outside heat. Ask to see a cross-section of the refrigerator walls. If the makers are proud of their box, they will be glad to show you.
On these protecting walls and well insulated and tightly closing doors depends largely the coolness of the food compartments. They should average 20 to 26 degrees colder than outside the refrigerator when the room thermometer reads 70 to 75 degrees. As the weather grows colder, this difference grows less.
