Close the DOOR!–An Addendem:

9/1/2011 – CAUTION:  The system for securing the refrigerator doors that I described below, has some flaws.  The main one is that these bungee cords gradually lose their tauntness and strength and after a few months of use, won’t keep a raw egg from pushing the door open from the inside. I am temporarily using a ratcheting binding strap on these same hook points, to keep the doors closed after a watermelon forced it open in route.  Yummmm.  I had forgotten how good a dropped watermelon can taste in the summer. Much

better than when you just cut one open.  

 

We swapped out the Norcold 1200LRIM RV refrigerator with a 2 door residential refrigerator back in January 2011.  The refer we used was our beer and watermelon fridge in the basement of the stix ‘n brix. We figured that it would be a free way to try it out and see if a residential would work for us ok. So far, it has and then some!

How it works

However, a residential refrigerator does not have positive catches to hold the door closed and we found very quickly that the magnetic seals are not strong enough to keep the doors closed in transit.

At first, we just propped the table against the door but that did not do so well, either, so I finally put my mind to it, thought of many Rube Goldberg technologies to hold the doors closed in transit, and finally came up with this:

I am not certain exactly where I got these clamps. I suspect they were at Home Depot and might have been clamps for holding the tubing for an icemaker water line.

2011-07-30 23.31.55.jpg

Eyes for hooks, up close.

2011-07-30 23.42.05.jpg

Being offset like this let me turn them so they don’t stick out forward and catch on sleeves and such as we put and take things in the fridge. I just used the existing screws that were already there for mounting the middle door hinge bracket. The doors were swapped to be left handed and the hinge was moved to the other side.

Freezer hinge

The bungees came in a pack from WalMart.  They are flat rather than round and the hooks are rigid plastic over steel and not just rubber dipped so they don’t catch on everything or scratch.

The hinge end just hooks over the top or bottom hinge of the door

In time, I may resort to something more technically sophisticated but this was really quick and easy to do for the time being.

ttfn

Budd