Our washing machine from whirlpool had a standard service done under the AMC today. At the end of the service the service man introduced a product from whirlpool - A defrost timer.

Image courtesy : whirlpoolindia.com

So what is this device? We all know that defrosting a fridge involves shutting the compressor off for a period of an hour or so. (depends on the brand and the settings). The red button for defrost is a timed switch which turns the compressor off and back on at the end of the pre-defined timeout.

This is a good thing but requires manual intervention. Most of us forget to defrost the fridge and end up seeing layers of ice in our freezer. This is actually not good for the fridge. Ofcourse this is applicable only to Direct Cooling fridges and not the frost free ones.

So this device, sits in-between the mains and your fridge. Every 8 hours, it shuts the supply to the fridge off and turns it back on. It is not clear how long the fridge stays off though.

The features are given here from the website:

• Pleasure of Frost Free in Dc
• Power Saver
• Auto defrost after every 8 hours
• Hassle free installation
• 1 year warranty

The price as mentioned on the website is Rs. 800/-

One thing strange here is that the technician mentioned it has a 6 month warranty whereas the website says it has one year warranty. Not sure who is correct!