What Do My Fridge and Shower Have in Common?

Within 24 hours, the following two things happened at my house:

1) I turn on the shower and attempt to do my usual adjustment to the ideal almost-too-hot-to-stand-but-not-quite temperature. I turned the dial all the way over to “Hot”, expecting to let the cold flow heat up then dial it back. The cold water got tepid, then a bit warmer than that, then stayed at what could generously be described as luke warm.

WTF? Did we use up all the hot water already? Not usually an issue in this house. Kiddo hasn’t had a bath tonight. I haven’t run the dishwasher yet. The washing machine isn’t going…

Before long Hubby and I realized something’s up with the mixing valve connected to our hot water tank. We tried to sort it out ourselves to no avail. It seems to kinda work some of the time. The joys of home ownership. Oh well. We’ll make do until we can get a repair guy in here.

2) Chilled as I was after my not-so-hot shower, I still wanted a beer later that evening. I opened the freezer drawer to get the glass I had previously stashed in there only to hear a disturbing hiss emanating from the back of it. A few seconds later a cloud of water vapour followed.

I looked in. The ice cubes were half-melted.

I reached in to find the back wall was hot to the touch.

Seriously, WTF?!

I grabbed a food thermometer and checked the fridge section. It was 8℃. It should be below 4℃.

On the bright side, we live in Ontario and it’s winter. All the fridge contents that we could fit in the camp cooler spent the night on the back deck. In the morning the ice cubes had refrozen, and the thermometer I’d put in the fridge read a respectable 2℃.

Um. Ok. I didn’t know fridges could mysteriously fix themselves like computers sometimes do, but whatever. Back into the fridge with all the food (I still don’t trust the freezer, but fortunately we have a chest freezer in the basement) . And I figured the repair guy would think I’m crazy, but called him anyway.

Turns out I’m not crazy. The sensor for the auto-defrost on our our three-month-old fridge is broken, resulting in overzealous defrosting. I’m pissed something broke on this fridge so soon, and yet thankful it’s still under warranty.

While waiting on a replacement part for the fridge and a plumber for the mixing valve, my house has a fridge and a shower that are both periodically luke warm. Sigh.