Refrigerators

Frigobars, top-mounts and side-by-side refrigerators:

the layout sets the footprint, the price and how much can go wrong. A frigobar is one cabinet with a small ice compartment, fine for a student room or a rental cabin. The two-door top-mount, freezer above, is the standard family fridge and the cheapest way to get a real freezer. Side-by-sides split the cabinet down the middle and usually add a water dispenser, which means a water line and one more thing to leak. If what you need is room for meat or a small restaurant’s stock, a chest model from freezers holds far more per colón than any fridge.

Automática, semiautomática or manual on a fridge tag:

those words describe how the freezer gets rid of ice, and they change the price and the repair risk. A manual fridge has to be switched off to thaw. A semiautomatic one has a button that pauses the cooling until the ice melts, then restarts by itself; it is mostly found on small fridges. An automatic, or no frost, fridge runs a heater on a timer so ice never builds up. It is the easiest to live with, and that heater, its sensor and its timer are where most used no-frost fridges fail. The other word to look for is inverter. An inverter compressor speeds up and slows down instead of switching hard on and off, so it is quieter and uses less power, but it depends on an electronic board that a power surge can kill.

Refrigerator prices behind the permanent sale tag:

appliance shops here show a crossed-out regular price with a big discount under it most of the time, so compare against what is actually charged. On that basis a basic automatic top-mount of 8 to 10 cubic feet costs around ₡200,000 to ₡300,000 new. That cheap new end holds used prices down: a working top-mount a few years old changes hands for around ₡80,000 to ₡150,000, because the buyer also pays for the truck and takes the risk on a compressor nobody can see inside.

A used refrigerator, including an old Heredia-built Atlas:

ask the seller to leave it running for a day before you go, and take a thermometer: the fridge side should hold 3 to 5 °C and the freezer well below zero. A steady hum that cycles off is normal. A click every few minutes followed by silence points to the start relay or the compressor, the repair that turns a cheap fridge into an expensive one. On a no-frost model, a sheet of ice on the back wall of the freezer means the defrost circuit has gone. Close the door on a strip of paper; if it slides out freely, the gasket is not sealing. Check for rust along the bottom edge and at the hinges, and ask whether the gas was ever recharged and with what. Most newer fridges run on R600a, a flammable gas not every technician handles. Atlas fridges were built in Heredia for decades, until Mabe, which bought the company, moved production to Colombia. A Heredia-built one can still keep food cold and parts are still stocked, but price it as an older design that draws more power than a new inverter. The same plant made Atlas cookers, which turn up in stoves and cooktops.

Listing the refrigerator you are replacing:

photograph it clean and switched on, with both compartments open and a close-up of the rating plate, and copy the cubic feet from the plate rather than rounding up. State the defrost type, whether it is inverter, its age and any repairs, such as a new board or a gas recharge. Buyers booking a truck will ask for height, width and depth, and whether there are stairs. Fridges come up most often when someone moves house or redoes a kitchen, so if yours is going because the new one has arrived, say so: it tells the buyer it was cooling right up to the day it was unplugged.