[nocar]

For years, I have been disturbed or irritated by the fact that in winter we use energy to heat the house and also use energy to cool things in the fridge. All that free outside coldness! Last year I finally got the idea of putting water bottles , plastic, outside til they freeze and then put them in the fridge, and returning them out when they melt while taking in another set. I have no idea how much we save, but I know that the fridge does not work as much.

nocar

[grabby]

It is called the pacific ocean. in summer it holds heat and in winter it releases heat and it averages 45 degrees.

People save a lot of energy just moving to the Oregon coast.
Then they pay 10 times the taxes for an ocean front home.

so where the cooling/heating advantage exists the living is more expensive, you can't wint.

a body of water eough to do a house would have to be a small lake to even the temp.

you could drill two wells and suck up water in one, extract the heat and pump it back doen into the ground but then you hvae pump expense for electricity.

you cant win.
nice cheap energy places, tahiti , is way to expensive.
but you can sleep on the beach,

if everyone did this the beaches would be packed with excrement and puddles of urine.

there are just too many people.


Can't support the sewage runoff without lots of Oceans to dump into.

I think what most people are planning are to be the biggest fish in the pond in their own area, the most secluded and the best storage and garden and hope the rest die off.
It won't work that way. The hungry ones come looking for food . Its like guerrilla warfare they will visit you with a small smile and meek atitude till they get your layout and when you sleep they will visit.

no matter how you cut it, the rich guys will be the first to go.

The only survival is on foot. travel constantly.

[Tanada]

For years, I have been disturbed or irritated by the fact that in winter we use energy to heat the house and also use energy to cool things in the fridge. All that free outside coldness! Last year I finally got the idea of putting water bottles , plastic, outside til they freeze and then put them in the fridge, and returning them out when they melt while taking in another set. I have no idea how much we save, but I know that the fridge does not work as much.

nocar

Brilliant! Free ice for the Ice Box! Why didn't I think of that????

[killJOY]

If you live in the North, why use your fridge at all between Oct and Apr?

For years, we have shut down the fridge in the fall and converted the pantry into a sort of walk in fridge. You keep the door shut, and you have plenty of room for stuff.

You can do the same with any back room or hall. Just put a thermometer in there to monitor the temp. Worst that could happen is a few things freeze. You open the door then and let the room warm up a little.

Simple.

[nocar]

If you live in the North, why use your fridge at all between Oct and Apr?

For years, we have shut down the fridge in the fall and converted the pantry into a sort of walk in fridge. You keep the door shut, and you have plenty of room for stuff.

You can do the same with any back room or hall. Just put a thermometer in there to monitor the temp. Worst that could happen is a few things freeze. You open the door then and let the room warm up a little.

Well for one thing, we do not have any extra rooms or pantries. And to be able to find things where they usually are kept is a very important convenience for us.

To open the [pantry] door to heat up the pantry? Well that is the same thing as letting out the room heat that also needs to be generated by energy. Heat leaks are not wanted in our house!

nocar

[WisJim]

I am in the semi-tropics, 29N. We get very few below freezing temps. Most Nov-Feb temps are in the 40s to 60s Farenheit. The house is usually 5-10 degrees F warmer resulting in one long continual shiver. It is pretty mild compared to what most of you experience, but it is cold enough to make me miserable with all my layers. I don't think I would gain much by putting the fridge outside for a few days a year. Not as much as learning to get by without it.

If it is that warm, you can eat fresh fruits and vegetables from the orchard and garden year around, and don't need a refrigerator or freezer to store out of season food in.

When it is 40 to 50 degrees outside, our house is warm enough that we don't need any extra heat. Bodies and lights are plenty. Insulation is the key!!

[grabby]

This ice freezing outside and putting into your fridge is a novel idea but it doesnt pan out.

Fridge is a heat pump, it Heats the house while it cools the box.

Rule one. When a refrigerator runs with the door open it ewill heat the house due to the energy the motor makes and waste heat from friction (not much) but if the motor was a perfect heatless motor, then running the fridge with the door ope will neither heat nor cool the room.


You see where we are going now?


Taking ice from outside and putting it IN the fridge makes the fridge run less, thus heats the house less and the melting ice will EVENTUALLY cool the house since the cold will seep into the room eventually.

so your heater in the house will work a bit more instead of the fridge motor.

you arent saving anything.

If you put the fridge OUTSIDE then you would save a lot, it wouldnt have to run much if at all and the house will not cool.

But going in and out will cool the house again.


so you can stop putting ice in your fridge since your heater will just work that much more to warm the house back up from all the cold ice brought inside. since you are bringing cold into the house (Fridge) You just dont notice it.

If your heater is more efficient than electricity heat then you will save a touch of money.

But you do get exercise carrying the ice, and this is good.


what would save more energy would be to extract the heat from the hot water in the drain system.


but this is pennies. when the power goes out you will just put the food outside on the deck at night.
Then, of course the ice trick will work and keep the frig cool but your house will be colder and you dont need power.

[nocar]

Well, I know very well that the fridge gives out heat and therefore is a heat source for the room. However, that heat is given out between the wall and the fridge, where I never find myself. Actually, very smartly, there is a ventilation thing, for outside air, behind the fridge on that wall.

Since I do not think the fridge gives out very much useful heat (useful for my comfort) I do think I save a little by putting ice in the fridge. I can hear that it goes on less often. But I agree, probably not very much.


nocar

[WisJim]

A problem wioth putting a refrigerator on a cold porch or outdoors is that if it does try to start when cold it could be hard on the compressor, as the compressor oil needs to be warm to do a good job of lubricating the parts in the compressor. Probably won't make an immediate noticable difference, but can shorten the life of the unit.

[frankthetank]

Might be better off getting one of those large superinsulated coolers (the ones that say they last x amt of days at x temp) and keeping it full?

[grabby]

Turning off the frig at night will just make it work twice as long the next day, you won't save anything.

as for how much heat it takes to freeze 1 gallon of ice from 80 degree water.



Power output can also be expressed in kcal/sec, ie, 1 kilowatt=1 kj/sec=.2388 kcal/sec, or 860 kcal/hr.


since a gallon is ABOUT (ABOUT) 4000 grams it takes 4000 x 40 cals to get it to 32 degrees, then it takes 120 cal/gram x 4000 to freez it.

since it takes 480,000 calories to freez the ice in one gallon that is about 1/2 a kilowatt hour. or about 2 cents in our electricty costs of 4 cents per kilowatt hour.

so the heat put out of the fridge in the back is about like running a 500 watt heater for one hour.

why would you want to push that outside?
That is free heat.


or a 1000 wat heater for thrity minutes?

also. bringing in 1 gallon of ice water after it froze outside will cool your fridge and thenn the water by 1/2 kilowatt, which means your house has to run 500 watts for one hour to make up for each gallon of ice you bring in from the outside.

this is my two cents worth (Pun intended.

so if you bring in the ice already frozen, your heater in the house willl run two cents more by the end of the day, and if you freeze the ice in the fridge, the fridge will run two cents more each day.

One way or another your going to use the two cents. you save nothing.


but that is just my two cents.


MAKING and MELTING ICE takes an ENOURMOUS amount of power, but bringing it in from outside gains you nothing but it would extend the lif of your fridge for one hour for each gallon you bring in and shortens the heater life by about 10 minutes.

That is a significant decrease in freezer run time and it is nioticeable, but there are no cost savings, except stronger arms and exercise for you, and a more silent fridge with a heater that runs about ten minutes longer which you probably wouldnt notice.

[gwmss15]

you guys are lucky it never gets below 68 F at night and is normally 90 F in the day year round. i have to use the aircond all the time as the humidity is high too 90% plus for most of the year

id love to find a way to kill that aircond energy cost but lving in a concrete building doesnt help even though it has cross flow ventilation but theres no brezze outside most of the time to give a coolling feel

any ideas

[Dukat_Reloaded]

There are off peak and peak energy rates, someone mentioned turning the fridge off at night.....it would be cheaper to turn it off during the day and turning it on at night. It would be cheaper to do everything at night, do all your cooking at night and keep the contents hot in thermos, boiled water for tea/coffee in the thermos, clothes washing, vacuming, dishwasher timed to run at night, news watching/internet/computer use, air conditioner to heat or cool as much as possible to last to the next off peak cycle. The electricity rates can make quite a saving, more so in the summer than in the winter though.

[Doly]

There is off peak and peak energy rates, someone mentioned turning the fridge off at night.....it would be cheaper to turn it off during the day and turning it on at night.

Problem is, one usually opens the fridge during the day, and it's when you open it that heat gets in.

Anyway, the fridge isn't usually the highest electricity usage at home. Top usage is always anything that uses electricity to heat, with electric heaters well at the top, followed by electric cookers, and then anything else including irons, toasters, electric kettles, etc. Next, TVs and monitors (of the non-flat kind). Everything else uses little electricity in comparison.

[grabby]

There is off peak and peak energy rates, someone mentioned turning the fridge off at night.....it would be cheaper to turn it off during the day and turning it on at night.

Problem is, one usually opens the fridge during the day, and it's when you open it that heat gets in.

Anyway, the fridge isn't usually the highest electricity usage at home. Top usage is always anything that uses electricity to heat, with electric heaters well at the top, followed by electric cookers, and then anything else including irons, toasters, electric kettles, etc. Next, TVs and monitors (of the non-flat kind). Everything else uses little electricity in comparison.

It doesnt matter when the door is opened it will average out the same. everytime you open the door, it will run that long to make up for it, it you turn it off in the day it will run twice as long at night to make it back up
you cant win by turning it off for any length of time whatsoever.


Its average temp of all the food that is involved plus you could get food poisinoing around 5 pm just before you turn it on, it is unsafe to unplug the frig and tlet the temp rise.

[grabby]

There is off peak and peak energy rates, someone mentioned turning the fridge off at night.....it would be cheaper to turn it off during the day and turning it on at night.

Problem is, one usually opens the fridge during the day, and it's when you open it that heat gets in.

Anyway, the fridge isn't usually the highest electricity usage at home. Top usage is always anything that uses electricity to heat, with electric heaters well at the top, followed by electric cookers, and then anything else including irons, toasters, electric kettles, etc. Next, TVs and monitors (of the non-flat kind). Everything else uses little electricity in comparison.

It doesnt matter when the door is opened it will average out the same. everytime you open the door, it will run that long to make up for it, it you turn it off in the day it will run twice as long at night to make it back up
you cant win by turning it off for any length of time whatsoever.


Its average temp of all the food that is involved plus you could get food poisinoing around 5 pm just before you turn it on, it is unsafe to unplug the frig and tlet the temp rise.

[strider3700]

not necessarily. It could require more power to keep the fridge at the coldest constantly instead of letting it float.

When it comes to home heating my thermostat tracks usage. I normally heat the house in the morning to 21 degrees, then let it drop all day to as cold as 10 degrees(it has never hit this temp in my house) then in the evening it goes back up to 21 before dropping back to 10 over night. I'd bet and can actually test assuming that the weather stays similar that this method uses less power then holding 21 degrees constantly.

But I agree turning off the fridge to warm up during the day is dangerous and I don't recommend it.

[dooberheim]

I've seen a chest refrigerator (Sunfrost? - SunDanzer? - I can't find the link right now as my ISP is being unresponsive) that supposedly can be run off one 80 watt solar panel. That would translate to about 120 kwh/year. Since your average 18 cf refrigerator/freezer uses about 500 kwh/year, that would save about 380 kwh/year, or at $0.08/kwh, a whopping $30.00/year. Since these fridges cost about $2,000, we'd be talking about a paybavck of 66 years. If it is just a monetary decision it's usually always better to keep your regular fridge.

Of course, with a lot of us, it's not just a financial decision. I'd like one of those refrigerators, or just arrange to do without one. I'm not there yet though.

DK