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The new freezer you have probably has a smaller compressor, but I can't say for sure since I've seen some very small compressors on old models. The manual defrost freezers are very efficiant by design since the only thing drawing power is the compressor (no fan motors or anything else) and the frost build up on the evaporator (the shelfs) will help in maintaining a temperature when the door is opened for a short period. Having the freezer packed full will also help with energy efficiancy for the same reason. the biggest problems with the manual defrost freezers is the condensor coilsealed within the wall of the freezer. With a very hot ambient temperature they don't work near as well or as efficiantly as a rear mounted static condensor or especially one with forced air cooling.
About the Adaptive Defrost Control on your Whirlpool, the control seperates the defrost cycles apart so it can target an 11 minute heater on time untill the defrost termination thermostat shuts it off. if its taking 9 minutes untill the thermostat opens, it will space the defrost cycles out furher. If its longer then 11 minutes it will put them closer together. Every Whirlpool side by side, and refrigerators built on that same chassis, with the ADC system seem to defrost at 24 hour intervals no matter how they are used. Doesn't matter if there is 10 people in the house or just one, they all seem to do it at 24 hours. At least on all the ones I've had a temp-scribe in for long enoufgh to see the defrost cycles.
And the defrost cycles it times out to adapt, it bases it off the last 30 defrost cycles so having the heater run for 20 minutes or longer for a few days in a row won't do anything to change the defrost interval as long as if after that it goes back to its normal time.
Most all other manufacturers do it the same way as Whirlpool with the ADC system with the exception of GE. Their refrigerators have a thermistor mounted on the top of the evaporator that can measure the frost build up and it defrosts when needed. Neat idea but its not near as reliable as the Whirlpool system. Sure they do fail, but its pretty rare. I would even say the old mechanical timers fail 10 times as much as the Whirlpool ADC. Now if you're talking about the Maytag side by sides before they started using the Amana chassis, those fail like nothing else. Back in the prime I would replace 3 a week, now that they are getting older and Maytag has never built a refrigerator to last so a lot of them are not being repaired I'm down to about one every3 weeks or so.
I've even put the Whirlpool ADC boards in refrigerators that had a timer just for the fun of it. It plugs right in to the standard plug (provided its wired the same as the Whirlpool ) and all you have to do is run two extra wires to it.
If you want to get more effiancy out of your old refrigerator you can put in a slower timer, or rewire your current times so the motor only advances when the thermostat cycles on. If it doesn't have the exposed motor wires, for $8 you can get a universal times with disconnected wires that you hook up to whatever terminal you want. Be careful though because every once in a while I'll run in to one that won't work that way unless you do some rewireing. Usually because the timer motor neturals itself through another circuit and for one reason or another it stalls out in defrost if whatever is in that circuit opens the connection up.
If your refrigerator has a horizontal evaporator just leave the defrost timer alone as they usually need to defrost that often to keep the evaporator clean.
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