fridge keeps shorting out?

I had a simialr issue here, my son moved into a new aprtment and the fridge at certain times of the day (often different times though) would trip the breaker, I found out that frost free fridges will often cause this issue, it is the extra current that is drawn when the fridge turns on the auto defrsot cycle, which is actually a heater element in the freezer, what we had to do was by pass the earth leakage detector for that circuit (fuse/circuit breaker remains of course, just take that circuit out of the apartments earth leakage detector). The electrician friend of mine did this and it was all good. Apparently this is fixed in the very newer models of fridges but ones that are 3-4 years old can cause this issue. and he tells me in most cases they never include the fridge circuit in the household earth leakage detector circuit fot this reason. Hope this helps.

Neville - Sydney
December 2008