I'm worried til I go out and see. Last night the weather site said it went down to 36, but in my garden it is open and the wind blows across and I believe it is colder there than elsewhere in the region covered by the weather report. Every fall, the frost hits there days before it hits the rest of the region. Yesterday I planted out - Ruds, agastache, and burgandy gaillardia. I think the seedlings will be ok, since they have been outside my house in the container. I'm a little worried about 3 gaillardia plants which I ordered thru the mail - my first time I order plants thru the mail - I am very excited about these. I wish I had waited to put them in the ground. hopefully they are ok. I would have covered them, but didn't feel like driving out to the garden. One disadvantageous of a community garden - not the backyard. oh well...

It depends on whether it was running when you unplugged it or not. If it was, there is usually a 'safety' cutoff timer that won't let it turn back on for several minutes. This has to do with overstressing the compressor. With a regular refrigerator/freezer, the coils are in the freezer side. There are a set of defroster heaters that run through the coils. Every once in a while (12 hrs?), the compressor stops and the defrosters turn on. The ice that has built up thaws and runs down to the bottom, draining out into a pan beneath the fridge. This water eventually evaporates. Problems happen when the defroster stops working or the drain fills with ice. If it were me and I had a place to store every thing, I would unplug it and let it thaw completely. I would look for the coils and the drain to see that they were clear. I would check out this 'split', though I suspect you were seeing insulation more than ice, but who knows. After all this, I would wipe it down with some disinfectant and turn it back on, fill it up, and go for another 5 years.

I agree to just get a new MW, and one with controls that work well for you. Operations on that one are a fire hazard. And you could mess up again, as you are pre-programmed to enter numbers differently! I also wonder if unseen damage could have occurred, not just what had visibly melted. Yeah, that is a really bad design to not have a value range for what can be entered. I would write to the manufacturer and let them know what happened. Have no idea what mine does with minutes! Will have to check it out. It does have valid ranges for other entries. GE. Scary stuff. I had a door malfunction and the unit fizzled and smoked. Luckly, I was right there. Yes, that odor is horrible! This post was edited by snookums2 on Fri, Jul 5, 13 at 13:05

I did this cheap & easy with raw netting & velcro, and I've been very pleased with it. It works fine if you don't go through the doors much. Cost well under $100. 1. I bought raw mosquito netting (from mosquitocurtains.com). 2. Cut it to fit across both doors, allowing extra width to fold edges under for neat appearance, & of course some overlap onto the door frame where the velcro would be. 3. Attached 1" velcro patches, 3 across the top and about 4 down each side. (I stapled one side of the velcro onto the curtains with an ordinary stapler - 2 staples on each. Super quick. Nailed their mates to the door frame (eek!) with 3 small nails. Doorframe, curtains & velcro are all white, and it looks surprisingly neat and nice. (I could even white-out the nail heads!) Still, in winter I'll probably take it down, leaving just a few inconspicuous little velcro patches.