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Lec R5026
by newby2
==LEC R5026 Fridge==
After having purchased a new mattress and ordering a new sofa I was pretty much spent up. This then set of a chain of events where everything else seemed to break. The main thing being our fridge freezer which because it is integrated is more hassle than you would think.
So after having ... checked everything that could be wrong with our broken fridge freezer wasn't fixable, we had to try and find something to move all our cold items in the fridge into. This is where Himself comes in handy (I won't mention that it was his light bulb changing skills that broke the fridge freezer in the first place) so I sent him out in search of a temporary replacement,
Luckily enough he was able to pick up a little fridge from the staff accommodation where he works. The funny thing was that it was the old fridge that we had when we lived there around 4 years ago! So after plugging it in it worked a treat and we were able to put a small amount of what came out of our broken one into it. (The frozen items went to Mums in her box freezer in the garage!)
The LEC R5026 is a small fridge but it does have a small box freezer compartment that has a tiny 10 litre capacity. The fridge capacity is 76 litres which again is very small. For us as a three person family this is really inadequate for our needs but seeing as we were desperate, anything is better than nothing.
When we firs had this fridge many years ago it did us all right. There was only Himself and me using it then and it mostly held beers and cokes and did us just fine. There is a good area in the door which will hold a 2 pint milk bottle but nothing larger than that. There was a salad drawer in the bottom part of the fridge but this has long since broken as it was made from a transparent plastic and not overly strong.
There are two toughened glass shelves in the fridge which are both strong and easy to clean although not especially large. The whole fridge is 83.8 cm in height, 48 cm in width and 56 cm in depth. When we had it in the old flat we lived in, it was stood on a raised plinth type of thing but now we just have it free-standing in in the kitchen.
The fridge does seem to get really cold really easily and for that reason we have had it on the lowest setting but it still seems to make things a lot colder than our just broken fridge did. This is not a bad thing and I guess would have been better in the summer!
The door in the freezer compartment has broken off and I seem to remember this being because the frozen compartment became too iced over and the door literally popped off. The freezer box is so small that really the only thing that would comfortably fit in their would be a packet of bacon and some ice cubes!
The fridhe is of a white colour and I am not sure if you could buy it in silver but the white makes it look clean and fresh and considering how old it is, I was able to give it a brilliant clean when Himself bought it back and it more or less looks as good as new from the outside.
The door of the fridge opens left to right and it is possible that if you wanted it to open the other way, that it can be changed. The interior light must be brilliant because I can never remember changing it when we had it years ago and unless someone else has done it (which I very much doubt) then it is still going strong. Of course this gives good enough illumination to light the whole fridge (it doesn't take much) whilst not getting hot!
I was quite surprised when I had a closer look at it and found out that it is an A graded energy efficient appliance. This is more or less standard nowadays but considering it is a good few years old now I would have thought it to be a worse grade than this. Not only that but it is also CFC and HFC free which can only be another good aspect of this fridge.
All in all I have to say that it has been somewhat of a little life saver to us. It is a well made long lasting appliance (which most don't seem to be nowadays) and although it is small and really not what we need, it was perfect for when there was just two of us. The only downsides are of course the brown salad draw and the broken ice box door. These parts I expect can be replaced but at a fairly high cost.
I think it has to be a fair score here and a 4 out of 5 star rating and a recommendation but only for a single or couple houshold. Thank god my new fridge freezer has this minute arrived! Can't believe I have got to now wait 4 hours for it to settle!!!
I do hope that this has been of some help/interest to you.
Many thanks for taking the time to read.
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Lec DF50G Beverage Cooler
by i_am_joy
I originally bought a Lec Drinks Cooler back in November of last year; I had a bonfire party organised and it wasn't until the last minute that I realised my usual method of keeping cold drinks cold wouldn't work. Living in a ground level bungalow meant I would usually fill the bath with very cold water and allow the bottles and cans to ... bob around in the water until needed - a brainstorm led me to forget that I no longer had a bath in my property, so with just an hour until my guests started arriving I had to pop to my local electrical store and find a small fridge.
This DF50G model was actually somewhat larger than I had in mind, and costing £90 it was far more expensive than what I had originally planned to pay for a small sized camping-style fridge. It was the design which originally caused me to consider it, followed by the realisation that if I bought this it wouldn't necessarily be a frivolous purchase as I could make use of a decent sized (but relatively small) fridge in my brick shed, where I already have a small sized kitchenette installed for ease of making a drink and/or snack while gardening.
The colour scheme for this Drinks Cooler is black and silver, this will go nicely in most modern kitchens and also (rather surprisingly) blended in beautifully with my more traditional country style kitchen. The glass door allows you to see the contents of the fridge at a glance, and please be aware that this is also suitable for the storage of food as well as drinks. There is no visible temperature marker within the fridge, however using a simple shelf sitting thermometer I was able to ascertain that it would be fine for keeping my ham and salad produce in.
The Drinks Cooler has two wire shelves; the uppermost shelf has a 'wave' design for keeping bottles safe without having them roll around the fridge, and the lower shelf is a basic flat wire shelf. At the bottom of the fridge there is a fixed two-tier rack which will enable you to store up to four standard sized cans, be it beer or soft drinks.
I find the shelf arrangement perfect for the intended use of a drinks cooler, however I personally could have lived without the top shelf having such curved apertures as this can make life a little awkward when I come to store foodstuffs in the fridge - as obviously these are not rounded as a bottle is! Another minor irritation is the rattling which occurs intermittently, since purchasing this fridge I have realised that it is indeed the shelves rattling as the mechanical aspect of the fridge kicks in. This could have been solved by perhaps coating the shelves with some kind of plastic, admittedly this doesn't overly concern me as the fridge is now installed in my outdoors kitchenette but I can imagine it would be rather grating if it were in my home.
I also find condensation can be a problem with this fridge, sometimes it's quite literally steaming up the inside of the glass door and I can watch beads of water slipping down the glass. This is a nuisance when I am using the fridge to store my freshly picked vegetables in readiness for taking them up to the house for freezing as the brown paper I generally wrap the vegetables in can get sodden very quickly.
This Lec fridge features an automatic defrost function which will help prevent any build up of ice on the chilling element. Frankly, as good as this fridge is I honestly do not think it gets cold enough for the risk of ice to be a problem -although perhaps this small addition will give the fridge a little extra life as ice build up can be devastating mechanically for these small sized fridges.
The size of the Lec DF50G is perfect in my opinion, it's much more slim line than the Stella Artois fridge my daughter has and looks far nicer in my opinion. It stands a shade over 49cm high, is 47cm wide and has a front-to-back depth of 45cm - looking at those figures you would be forgiven for thinking this is going to be an extremely 'boxy' fridge, but despite the squareness of its dimensions it actually looks rather sophisticated and stylish.
The glass door can be fitted to open from either the left or right hand side, my handle is on the left (as shown above) and that is perfect for my kitchen space so I haven't actually tried to change the door over. However, glancing at the hinges it looks to be a simple job so don't worry if you prefer a door which opens the opposite way.
I do recommend you place the fridge on some type of non-slip mat as I don't find it the most stable appliance to use. Particularly when the fridge is quite empty it will slide around on my worktop, this is especially worth thinking about if you are planning to install you fridge above the washing machine or in a high traffic area of your kitchen as banging around nearby can lead the fridge to slide around more than you imagine it is going to.
Overall, I do recommend this fridge. Considering there are a few niggles with it I do think it's slightly overpriced, however now summer is coming to its end I suggest you have a look around as now may be the time to pick up a bargain.
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