Last night in Illinois

Fridge Digital Display

Our last night in Illinois taught us a valuable lesson – don’t block ventilation areas! On Saturday we were watching the weather for effects to our area from Hurricane Ike which had done so much damage to Galveston. You may recall we had been caught in the torrential 8” of rain and accompanying westerly winds courtesy of Hurricane Gustav, and unknown to us at the time, it had forced water through the refrigerator ventilation vents and the water had pooled in a cavity underneath the fridge. So this time when they predicted we were to expect wind and rain at about 6am Sunday, we taped some plastic sheeting over that area as a precautionary measure. Well, the fridge overheated, and at around midnight, we heard a loud muffled pop. Neither of us could work out what it was until I noticed the fridge showed an error on the digital readout. We pulled out the instruction manual and followed the instructions. Apparently we could have one chance to reset the cooling system, otherwise we had to take it to a refrigeration mechanic. So we removed the plastic sheeting off most of the vents and just left a portion at the top to limit water entry, then we turned the fridge off and left it to cool for an hour to maximize our chances. After half an hour we turned it back on and presto, the error light had gone out and the digital readout was back to normal. But we wanted to check there were no lasting effects, so we waited until 2am before settling into bed, very relieved that we did not have to try and find a technician on a Sunday!

Sure enough, at 6am we were rudely awoken by buffeting winds and lashing rain as Ike moved north east towards Chicago. Fortunately the winds didn’t get anywhere near as high as we had been used to, and having the jacks down kept us stable. It was pretty much all over by 10am and this time no water got inside the ventilation area. Could have been a costly mistake to cover those vents!