18 ms·

Low Energy Chest Fridge

245 points by kome 4y ago

ClassyJacket 4y ago
Couldn't you get the best of both worlds by having an upright fridge with drawers?
- contravariant 4y ago
  You could find out by filling a drawer with dry ice and water and trying to open it without the smoke spilling out. Seems to me a chest fridge is simpler.
- rob74 4y ago
  The advantage of a chest-style freezer/fridge is that cold air is trapped inside because the only opening is at the top. With drawers, the cold air from the drawers above the open one will still partly spill out. Plus then you have more seams that might not close perfectly than with a door.
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    Yes that's all true but is the difference worth the money vs convenience tradeoff? I've used chest freezers before and it's not great to lean down to lift a large chunk of meat out of.
    - pmontra 4y ago
      You are right but the convenience I was thinking about is mostly the floor space. Many people living in cities have small houses and space is literally at a premium. The extra electricity cost of a vertical fridge could be offset by the cost of the space on the floor to accommodate the equivalent chest fridge. About that other kind of convenience, shouldn't a chest fridge be long and shallow to have everything reachable from the opening without having to lift stuff and dig?
      - nordsieck 4y ago
        > About that other kind of convenience, shouldn't a chest fridge be long and shallow to have everything reachable from the opening without having to lift stuff and dig? There's a tradeoff between interior volume and convenience. And since most people who want convenience get a vertical model, I think interior volume wins a lot of the time. Someone who buys 1/2 of a cow, or takes home a deer just needs to freeze the whole thing. They don't necessarily need convenient access to all of the contents.
      - bluebill 4y ago
        What would happen if you could get the chest freezer where the door doesn't swing open vertical, but rises vertical upwards? The door could become a work surface. When you need access, you could push a button, or lift it and the entire door would lift straight up. Anything on top, would remain in place. Now for something like this to work it would need a series of shelves (grated shelves to allow the cold air to remain inside) on the interior that could move up. Sort of like a vertical lazy susan. Essentially, the chest freezer could become part of the kitchen work surfaces or it could be come an island work area, not taking up valuable real estate - it would be the valuable real estate. I have always thought this could be the way instead of vertical standing models.
        pmontra 4y ago
        I can imagine a permanently closed fridge with inspection cameras inside and an app to select which box to take out. Then something like this [1] will deliver the box to a tiny opening acting as an airlock, or take a box and park it inside. And of course $499 upfront plus $99 per month for the app, advertising, and front door delivery to refill empty boxes, and no self serviceable parts, and mandatory subscription to a $19 monthly cleaning service, and... I think I could keep going on like this for a while. Lots of ideas for a front camera /s [1] https://www.pouted.com/fully-automated-car-parking-systems/ https://www.pouted.com/fully-automated-car-parking-systems/
- pja 4y ago
  Not quite as good, but much better than open shelves. Our upright fridge freezer has deep drawers in the freezer compartment, presumably for this reason.
- 01acheru 4y ago
  Or a chest fridge with vertical drawers (:
  - h0l0cube 4y ago
    A cursory Google seems to say this is not a thing, but I don’t see why it couldn’t be, apart from having almost no market to justify its complicated manufacture.. and sliding baskets are probably cheaper and more practical
01acheru 4y ago
The only thing worse than vertical fridges are those supermarket fridges that are both vertical and doorless. Those should be banned and IIRC in some countries supermarkets must have fridges with doors (I think France is one of those).
- Sakos 4y ago
  What country has those monstrosities? Never seen them
  - yurishimo 4y ago
    The US has some, usually in the deli/cheese section.[0] It's the big shelf in the center of the image. The freezer section has doors for more effective temperature control. 0: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/austin-texas-circa-march-2017-600w-1094163149.jpg https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/austin-texas-circa-...
  - fyhn 4y ago
    Fairly common in Norway
  - pdw 4y ago
    If you do a google image search for "supermarket fridge", half of the results are doorless.
    - Sakos 4y ago
      Doesn't really answer the question.
  - dools 4y ago
    All the meat and dairy, and some vegetables are in completely open refrigerators in most Australian supermarkets, although they’re also air conditioned so any loss of cold air is just more air conditioning really
  - dijit 4y ago
    UK has them. Like on this picture: https://www.grocerygazette.co.uk/2021/11/09/supermarket-fridge-greener/ https://www.grocerygazette.co.uk/2021/11/09/supermarket-frid...
danuker 4y ago
My parents' ancient fridge consumes 2kWh a day. They refuse to buy a new one because it hasn't broken down yet.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  What's the equivalent energy cost of a new fridge though? And it's not just that, there's the pollution of dumping the old one (how much refrigerant will be leaked? how much plastic sent to landfill?). And there's costs of the new one that aren't factored in, like transporting it halfway around the World. I wish government put money into guidance on these matters for domestic goods.
  - jve 4y ago
    Mine is ~8 years old Samsung with i don't know which energy efficiency class: 1,1-1,3kWh/24h Vertical freezer with some 7 chests which is many more years older takes 0,6-1kWh/24h - probably depends when we open it and when not. Probably better to look at monthly (October) stats: 38,64kWh Fridge, 21,81kWh for freezer. Hmm, August 40/35; July 27/24. Dunno why it fluctuates so much. Ofcourse, October was heating season, but that doesn't seem to impact freezer for worse. Which is weird - it is 2 meters apart from heat source. But yeah, summer could hahve
- haliskerbas 4y ago
  Same, bought a kill-a-watt[1] device to show the $ directly and that helped. Good luck! 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_A_Watt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_A_Watt
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  My new fridge consumes 1.1 kWh a day. I checked this while I was away on vacantion, so the door wasn't opened for 3 weeks. Depending on electricity prices, it's probably a better call to not change it.
  - Slartie 4y ago
    That's pretty high though. I've measured my brand new chest fridge (which I operate as a cooler, thus only set to 5 degrees celsius) recently and it consumes 0.2kWh/d. My old vertical fridge/freezer combo which is over 10 years old consumes 0.72kWh/d (that one is operated normally). Both are opened multiple times per day.
rhn_mk1 4y ago
A brilliant example of how energy-efficiency plays against space-efficiency.
snakeboy 4y ago
Dumb question: Can I lay down my vertical door fridge on its back to achieve these efficiency gains?
- masklinn 4y ago
  I don’t think so. Part of it is that chests tend to have more insulation (also the reason why mini-fridges are absolute dreck efficiency wise), and the coolant / radiator circuit won’t be set up properly: in a traditional vertical fridge the coolant circuit is through the back or racks (for freezers) and the radiator are on the back, if you lay it on its back the radiator is now on the bottom, and trying to heat up the insulation, with the coolant circuit also at the bottom.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- ben_bai 4y ago
  No, because the heat-pump (compressor) in the back needs to stand upright. Also the back has cooling fins that need air circulation FYI: After transport you need to wait some time to let the oil in the compressor settle before turning it on. A level ground is also highly recommended.
  - defrost 4y ago
    These can be detached and rotated ...
    - freeqaz 4y ago
      You'd have to sweat together new copper fittings though and probably deal with draining + recharging the refrigerant lines. Not a trivial project for a novice.
      - ErikCorry 4y ago
        And if you accidentally just vent the refrigerant lines instead of draining then you can release a year's worth of global warming in about 20 seconds. Best not to try.
captn3m0 4y ago
More details on this PDF: https://mtbest.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2021/03/chest_fridge_1.pdf https://mtbest.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2021/03/chest...
a012 4y ago
I guess their device is something similar to the homebrewing tool that I use Inkbird to control fridge/freezer temperature. Except from the less wasting cold air, I dislike the chest freezer for food storage because it's difficult to organize and then find things at the bottom.
pbhjpbhj 4y ago
I've wondered about fitting an inner door on each shelf of the fridge. I wonder if you'd save enough energy to warrant manufacture and shipping of clip-on doors?
helpfulmandrill 4y ago
Yes, but who has the space?
- LeoPanthera 4y ago
  We keep ours in the garage.
- 2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
  Most people with a basement, garage or root cellar.
helpfulmandrill 4y ago
Jesus, have you seen the rest of the website that article was originally published on, though. "Consciousness and Immortality". Alright mate.
- kleiba 4y ago
  Check out the Q&A section on that site: Q2: It's impossible to go to the other end of the galaxy, live there for a few days, and come back in 10 days, even at the speed of light. How do you explain your trip? A: Michel told me that his journey was made using what he called "trans-substantiation". The main part of the galactic journey does not take place in space-time, but outside it. You can only leave space-time (or return to it) at a sufficient distance from the nearest star, otherwise you will explode.
- lachstar-x 4y ago
  I have bought several of his multicolour chakra tshirts over the years and find them very soothing to wear. Indoors.
sdfjkl 4y ago
This has never bothered me until moving on a boat, where top-loading fridges (often ice boxes with a compressor kit retrofitted) are the norm. Because energy supply is very limited. They are integrated into the kitchen work surface and double as a temporary workspace when closed. So it's possible to save space _and_ energy. Now the standup kitchen fridges in houses really bother me. Every time I see someone open one, I imagine seeing all that cold air being sucked out by the opening door and falling on the ground.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  You can feel it on summer days, if you dont have AC and get something from the fridge on your bare feet.
- mihaaly 4y ago
  What irritates me (also friends) is relatives opening it and standing their thinking about the food, keeping it open for a minute or more without actual activity. I wonder if transparent door would be a gain here, with worse thermal insulation but allowing to locate things and contemplate before opening the door and allowing the cold to escape to the floor.
  - blensor 4y ago
    Does it make much of a difference if you keep it open for 20 seconds or 2 minutes? I imagine that as soon as most of the cool air has flowed out of it (which should happen quite quickly), the additional energy loss is minimal There are compromise versions where there is a small door at half height in the big door, through which you can get the bottles/milk crates out of the side of the door. What I am wondering is if there is a way to solve this with at technical solution that keeps the current standup design but makes it energy efficient. For example: An opening at the bottom of the door that sucks cold air in when the door opens and transports it to the top back of the compartment. While open, most of the cold air would be saved and it's only a ventilator that's running for a few seconds
  - londons_explore 4y ago
    Many fridges start beeping after 30 seconds of the door being open. People quickly learn to ignore the beep while they "quickly make breakfast" and then put the sausages and eggs back in the fridge and close the door after eating breakfast. #billpayerfrustratedwithhisfamily
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
The solutions? Have two transparent interior rolling shutters. Open only one section on selection motion. Or just have the best of both worlds, a chest fridge, with a transparent interior, which moves upward, allowing access via a rolling shutter. Or have a airlock, were a automated retrieving gadget brings you your product in standardized containers? Similar to ice cream dispsensers or softdrink coolers? Basically a portal crane traversing the chest cooler, extracting a "cooling" pillar on demand, which then only guarants acess on demand.
- andbberger 4y ago
  or, hear me out, chest fridges
  - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
    I hear you, treasure island decorated fridges. The treasure of frostbeard, a map with a hidden opening button on top, wood panneling on the side..
- HPsquared 4y ago
  Or.. drawers (optionally with clear fronts). Each drawer is effectively a mini chest fridge.
  - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
    Something like a vertical apothecary cabinet, leaving the cold air down in the fridge.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  I've wondered if it might be more energy efficient to build home systems more like commercial ones. Make it walk-in but with a double door so you don't spill all the cold air when you open it. The freezer spills into the refrigerator so the cold isn't lost. Since it's built in size is of minimal importance and you can put a lot of insulation on it.
querez 4y ago
> My chest fridge [...] consumes about 0.1 kWh a day. This fridge is 10 to 20 times more energy efficient than typical household fridges on the market today. According to a test report by Stiftung Warentest (the German equivalent to Consumer Reports), my vertical fridge consumes ~ 0.4-0.5 kWh / day. While that is more, it's nowhere close to the 10x-20x given by this guy.
- kleiba 4y ago
  Your fridge is probably half the size of an average American fridge.
  - goodpoint 4y ago
    - nobrains 4y ago
      good point goodpoint
    - Mountain_Skies 4y ago
      Western Europeans are rapidly gaining on Americans but it's funny to see how much in denial they are about it even though it's impossible to miss when leaving the house.
    - mihaaly 4y ago
      The movie In Bruges comes to mind, the scene at the tower between Colin Farrell and the American tourists. (... also a bar in SF where I was on the smaller end of males with 1.9m and 102kg)
  - thaumasiotes 4y ago
    > half the size This made me think. I would kind of expect the energy consumption of a fridge to be related to the surface area of the cooled volume rather than the volume itself. It's not necessary to spend any energy cooling air that is already surrounded by equally cold air. Assuming all fridges are cubes, doubling the volume of the fridge will increase the surface area by a factor of 2^{2/3} = 59%. This will also be true if the fridge has any rectangular dimensions and you double the volume by scaling it up evenly in all three dimensions. Things are more complicated if you scale the dimensions of the fridge unevenly.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
badcppdev 4y ago
There are major usability issues with chest fridges. * People in wheelchairs. * Children and shorter people. * Cleaning is hard if there are messes or spills. * You can't see what's in a chest fridge very easily which is a problem if there is more than one person in the household. * Shelves are really useful when you have things that can't be stacked on top of one another
- pjc50 4y ago
  Never mind that, the major issue is real estate: a horizontal fridge uses twice the real estate, and in a Western country the cost of that small patch of ground will vastly exceed the running costs of the fridge.
  - i_am_proteus 4y ago
    It's possible to engineer around hurdles like this: - Put the fridge under a counter on rollers (with a cableway for the necessary electrical hookup). - Put rolling shelves(with lips) inside the fridge to allow ready access to the bottom storage areas. Even if consumers won't trade off a little bit of convenience for energy efficiency today, they probably will when electricity is much more expensive.
    - badcppdev 4y ago
      Do you feel that a vertical fridge with a 'normal' outer door and individual drawers or doors in both the fridge and freezer sections could compartmentalise the fridge and give better energy efficiency and require fewer engineering changes? I'm inclined to think that engineering improvements to a vertical fridge is easier than the changes required for a chest fridge.
- laputan_machine 4y ago
  Then we should definitely never use them. Honestly, this line of reasoning really grates my gears. Yeah a tiny portion of people can't use them, so nobody should use them, I shouldn't put one in my house, etc. If that's not what you're stating, then what _are_ you stating? I don't get it.
nzach 4y ago
Technology Connections did a video[0] about this some time ago. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGAhWgkKlHI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGAhWgkKlHI
Cthulhu_ 4y ago
Weird that this is just an article that quotes the source verbatim: https://mtbest.net/chest-fridge/ https://mtbest.net/chest-fridge/ Submitters, can you please link to the original source if the one you link to adds no value?
- Veen 4y ago
  There is a little value to the current link. I didn't know about No Tech Magazine, but now I do. It lead me to read several other interesting articles, which would not have been the case if I'd landed on the fridge article's original source.
- jna_sh 4y ago
  It might be “weird” that this link was submitted to HN, but the purpose of No Tech Magazine is to host things that Low Tech Magazine links to, to ensure the articles don’t suffer link rot.
subpixel 4y ago
I have a chest freezer in the garage. It’s great, it costs very little to run. But it’s a beast to organize. For a while we had piles of loose frozen things, which eventually got all mixed up, so we had no idea what was hiding in there. Now I have some plastic crates stacked inside - but the bottom level is a mystery bc nobody’s ever wants to lift out a 20lb crate to see what lies beneath.
- thedanbob 4y ago
  My wife did this with ours but took it a step further: the has a whiteboard in the kitchen with an inventory of exactly what we have in the chest freezer. It works well, except for once in a while when she takes something out but forgets to update the inventory. I offered to build her a barcode system but so far she hasn’t taken me up on it :p
  - bengale 4y ago
    Our chest freezer is white and works basically as its own whiteboard. We just scrawl on the top with dry wipe markers what's in there.
  - chiefalchemist 4y ago
    What about barcodes? Not expensive. Should offer a quick return.
  - Loughla 4y ago
    We just write on the lid of the freezers we have. They're white, so why not?
- nickcotter 4y ago
  We had a power cut while on holiday. No real damage or loss but the bottom layer is now re-frozen icecream, probably caused by something not quite sealed being stacked sideways.
  - Loughla 4y ago
    We keep a cool whip container filled with water, with a quarter under the lid, on top of the water in the top of our freezer. Then, when (not if) we lose power for a while, we duct tape the lid to the freezers closed. Once power comes back on, we check the quarter. It's a pretty good indicator of what we should get rid of, based on how far in the container the quarter has sunk and re-frozen.
falcor84 4y ago
Am I the only one who found the physical unit of kWh/day really confusing? If there's anyone else like me who prefers Watts, this equates to an average power consumption of slightly over 4W (100watt*h over 24 hours).
- tapland 4y ago
  With appliances kWh/day is useful since you count costs in kWh
- tecleandor 4y ago
  Well, the thing is you can easily calculate your energy expense or your battery storage, given its calculated in watts/hour.
- capekwasright 4y ago
  It's a little awkward, but it makes sense in the context of determining an energy budget or the daily operating cost on grid power.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  Watts are handy if your electricity is priced around 11.4 cents per kWh. If that's the case, 1 Watt continuously = 1 USD per year. (scale up or down to suit your tariff) (1 watt = 8.76 kWh/yr)
MrMid 4y ago
We made such chest fridge from an old freezer, and have been using it for almost a year now. The floor space it takes isn't that concerning, as it doubles as a counter top. It really is very efficient. The only problem we have is humidity. With everyday use, a lot of condensed water gets stuck inside, the humidity goes near 100 % and the moulds really like that. We tried many things, including making a drain hole inside, but nothing helped. We "solved" it with putting 1 kg of adsorbent (silica gel) on the bottom. It lasts about two months between regenerations, so it is quite usable this way.
- HPsquared 4y ago
  With a regular fridge/freezer the steady-state relative humidity should be quite low because the cooling coils will condense out a lot of the water vapour, and drain it out a hole in the back to evaporate outside the enclosure. The cooling coil is always going to be the coldest surface within the enclosure, therefore that's where the water vapour would tend to condense. Don't chest fridges have a similar mechanism? Perhaps the problem is things being too closely-packed, so the air can't circulate - so that when the lid is opened and water vapour let in from outside, it condenses on the food etc - but this isn't then removed by the mechanism above.
  - MrMid 4y ago
    The cooling in this freezer is all around the walls, and the condensed water stays on the walls and then falls down on the bottom. There was originally no drain hole, and even adding the drain hole didn't solve the problem. It was designed as a freezer, not a fridge, after all.
- jrs235 4y ago
  How do YOU regenerate the silica gel? Just let it try out? Set in sun? Bake? I'm just genuinely curious. Thanks!
  - r2_pilot 4y ago
    I use colored indicator silica beads for desiccant purposes and when the indicator shows they're "wet"/green, I spread them evenly on a baking sheet with foil and bake them at the recommended temp, stirring occasionally, until they turn back orange.
kohlerm 4y ago
pretty standard in german households
- Slartie 4y ago
  Actually not. A lot of people have a freezer, but one set to "fridge mode" (temperature greater 0 degrees celsius)? I have a chest fridge that I use like this, but I searched a while to find one which has a thermostat supporting temperatures above 0 degrees celsius. Most of them only support freezing, and you have to construct some custom temperature-controlled power on/off mechanism (I actually did that with my old device which could only freeze) to use it as a fridge.
moffkalast 4y ago
> The chest-style refrigerator is surprisingly practical and convenient to use. Except it's neither of those things and why the normal side opening fridge is the prevalent kind despite its poor power efficiency. It occupies double the floor area for half the storage, and you have to take everything out to access the bottom most shelves. Even on boats where power efficiency is critical, I've seen people go for the side opening type if they possibly can, because it's just that much more practical.
- PainfullyNormal 4y ago
  > and you have to take everything out to access the bottom most area. And an ice pick, if you live anywhere even slightly humid.
  - pcdoodle 4y ago
    This is a fridge, not a freezer. PS: if you're buying a freezer to convert, pick one without a defrost cycle.
    - HPsquared 4y ago
      That's even worse then - at least if the owner of a chest freezer forgets about something at the bottom layer, it's not going to become hazardous. With a fridge on the other hand, most things have a very finite lifespan before they become mouldy etc.
      - vanderZwan 4y ago
        How is this different from a regular fridge? The main reason people forget stuff in the freezer is because it's used as a freezer, for long-term storage. The shape isn't the biggest part of that problem. If you use this as a fridge you won't have the same issues. edit: having said that, the accumulation of condensed water at the bottom that some other commenters mentions seems like a real problem that needs a dedicated solution.
jacknews 4y ago
I had a vertical fridge-freezer (Bosch I think), where the fridge and freezer were separate compartments, but behind the main door, the freezer had slide-out drawers instead of shelves. I always thought that design would also work well for the fridge section. Instead of shelves, you have drawers, which better keep the cold air in, and are also easier to use - no more reaching over things to get something at the back of the shelf. Or perhaps there's a market for some kind of sliding drawer to replace shelves in existing machines. Unfortunately I think they are all completely non-standard sizes. Another area that is crying out for standardization, modularity etc.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  what we have is a mix - some drawers on the bottom (2 layers), and shelves on top (3 layers IIRC). It mixes nicely, since shelves have bigger 'real capacity' in my opinion and its easier to put in non-standard shapes
mnw21cam 4y ago
I have a large American-style fridge/freezer. I measured the power consumption, and it came out as an average of 70W, or 1.68kWh/day. For the size of fridge, this isn't bad. However, I was slightly surprised to see that this was more than our use of electricity for all cooking activities - that is, oven, kettle, microwave, slow cooker, toaster. I have a gas hob - if this were not the case, I suppose it would be the other way around. But still, that one fridge was a very significant portion of the total house electricity use.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- consp 4y ago
  I have a separate freezer/fridge and they amount to about the same as a standard European sized fridge (so no double door US style things) and the freezer uses about 63W when on and the fridge about 58W. I guess the compressors are of the same order but the freezer simply runs longer. Daily usage is about 0.9-0.92kWh. Less if you don't open them, more if you put something in the freezer/fridge which is not cold. I tried measuring if getting a new one would save power and was affordable somewhat cost effective but the short story is that the upfront cost could only be recuperated even by a tiny bit when kWh prices rise far into the 1 Euro/kWh.
coldtea 4y ago
If access and storage area per floor area is the problem for chest fridges, would a fridge with sliding drawer-style shelves be a good compromise? The drawer compartments could have holes (for air to circulate) when closed (like current "grill" shelves), and a mechanism that closes them and isolates the drawn-out drawer from the one below and above it. This way you lose at most one drawer worth of cold air and heat only one drawer worth of products. The mechanism would be quite simple to build (just mechanical, shouldn't need any fancy electronics). The downside being that you would have rigid fixed compartments (each shelve's size) whereas fridges tend to have adjustable shelves.
trabant00 4y ago
Freezers can be vertical as you don't require easy access multiple times a day, don't require shelves as solid frozen food can be stacked without getting squished, you don't put pots, plates, etc in them, don't require drawers as you don't want multiple temperature and humidity zones, and on and on and on. The efficiency increase is also greatly exaggerated in the article. For one see the comment by avian in here. Secondly that converted freezer has a lot more insulation than a fridge because of its thicker walls (which take more space) and also the lack of ventilation for moisture than any modern fridge has. And thirdly we have no real comparison with the same usage, as far as I know that person might open it every 2 days. If we ignore all those problems we might as well weld a box shut and be happy with perfect efficiency at zero usability.
jansan 4y ago
Something that meany seem to be missing in the comments is that this is a fridge (for cooling stuff), not a freezer (for deep.freezing stuff). He turned the freezer into a fridge, which seems to make sense, as gravity keeps the cold air better in a horizontal fridge. THey are not as practical, as you have to stack stuff onto each other and it is easier to find space for a vertical fridge in a kitchen, but from a pure energy consumtion perspective this makes sense. If the mentioned energy consumtion is correct, it is really quite low. A good new fidge that size without freezer uses about 90 kWh per year, which is about twice as much as his fridge.
hnrodey 4y ago
In October we bought a new chest freezer (16 cu ft) and it's currently using about .75 kWh per day as measured by Emporia Vue. https://www.emporiaenergy.com/how-the-vue-energy-monitor-works https://www.emporiaenergy.com/how-the-vue-energy-monitor-wor... https://www.homedepot.com/p/Whirlpool-16-cu-ft-Manual-Defrost-Residential-Convertible-Freezer-in-White-WZC5216LW/319653811 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Whirlpool-16-cu-ft-Manual-Defros...
- wumms 4y ago
  The whole domain https://www.homedepot.com/ https://www.homedepot.com/ is down for me - I get "Access Denied" ("You don't have permission to access "http://www.homedepot.com/ http://www.homedepot.com/" on this server.").
  - MandieD 4y ago
    It’s geofenced - if I access it directly from my residential connection in Germany, I get the same, but if I use my Tailscale exit node in the US, it works fine.
    - wumms 4y ago
      Thanks! I just tried it using Tor (ExitNodes {us}) and it works as well.
sidewndr46 4y ago
You can offset this by keeping the vertical fridge or freezer full of bottled waters if you don't use all the space. It actually makes it easier for the fridge to maintain temperature since the thermal mass inside is higher. The bottles take up the volume that would otherwise be cold air. The bottles help a bit obstructing the outflow of cold air as well.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  But what's the cost of cooling those bottles when they replace something that was removed? I like the idea of thermal mass in a refrigerator or freezer (it took me a while to figure out why milk at home would never last to it's shelf date--the grocery store has a huge thermal mass to it's dairy cases, the milk on the shelf gets much less exposure to warm air than the milk at home) but if you're going to eliminate dead air space I think it's best done with empty boxes, not water.
lifeisstillgood 4y ago
Is my maths right here? He claims that the average fridge in average home is 1kwh per day (quick google suggests is correct #). And he claims to run his on 0.1kwh. So roughly roughly thats 1kwh per day saving. If everyone in Uk (about 25 million households) used his fridge it would save 25m kwh / day is 25 GWh / day or 9125 Gwh or 9Tera Wh per year? UK uses 300 Tera Wh per year of elec. (UN source from datacommons.org) So changing fridges will save 1/30 of electrical use. Just how much of an argument is there for funding a "not so optional" change to peoples lifestyles and domestic arrangements? Some combination of household goods, household insulation, reduced car useage # https://www.energybot.com/energy-usage/refrigerator.html https://www.energybot.com/energy-usage/refrigerator.html
dplgk 4y ago
In the winter, when it's quite cold out, I often wonder why I'm paying to make cold air when there is free cold air available outside. What about a fridge that takes in air from outdoors?
- Toutouxc 4y ago
  If you're willing to put a hole in your wall, preferably somewhere convenient, where you can also place the fridge, then yes, that could be useful.
- MandieD 4y ago
  I think of the shaded parts back porch as a giant walk-in (out?) fridge most of the winter, and have considered getting someone’s discarded chest freezer mostly to reduce the likelihood of critters and to moderate the effects of a slight overnight freeze.
- verisimilitude 4y ago
  Agreed! We need an electrified version of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_cooler_(cabinet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_cooler_(cabinet)
  - airbreather 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolgardie_safe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolgardie_safe
- Tade0 4y ago
  I see it as a fairly energy-efficient way to get additional warmth - after all it's a heat pump. That being said my mother keeps all the Christmas food on the balcony because it solves both the cooling and storage space problems.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  Yeah, I really wish there was more focus on not wasting energy. Off the top of my head: We have a normal furnace/air conditioner combo (I live in a climate where summer air conditioning is essential), it has no concept of outside air temperature. I really would like a system where it doesn't have the concept of being set to cool/off/heat, but rather a concept of ideal temperature/heat-to/cool-to. Before running the high energy systems it looks at the outside air temp to see if it would be more efficient to turn on a fan to bring in outside air. It also will use that fan to adjust the temperature towards ideal but will not use the high energy systems to do so. The HVAC should also be able to communicate with the refrigerator. If heat is desired in the house the refrigerator uses coils inside the house to dispose of it's waste heat. If heat is not desired it uses outside coils.
itamarst 4y ago
You can buy chest freezers that have conversion to refrigerator as a built-in feature, e.g. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/amana-16-cu-ft-chest-freezer-with-basket-white/6476505.p?skuId=6476505 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/amana-16-cu-ft-chest-freezer-wi... (Appears common enough that BestBuy has it as a search flag).
PYTHONDJANGO 4y ago
I would like to suggest to live without a fridge - it is absolutely possible. Of course it depends on many things, but if you adapt a little bit you will not need a fridge. Fresh food is more healthy, anyway. I just got into the situation of living without a fridge while constantly travelling between two places. After a while I realized that I do not need a fridge at all. Even after settling on one place I still do not need it. Try it yourself.
- smolder 4y ago
  Can I ask where you live? I know this attitude is common in some cultures more than others. I also know the viability of eating a healthy diet without your own refrigeration in some places will be next to impossible. Bulk frozen vegetables are pretty important when you don't have local access to fresh ones.
- LorenPechtel 4y ago
  Which means a lot of travel to buy food. No refrigeration = daily trips to the store. It also means a lot more discarded packaging because you have to buy highly perishable stuff in much smaller packages.
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
I have one in my garage and use it as a meat buffer. When there's a good sale, we stock up. Over the next months, we draw down the supply, topping back up if there's another exceptional sale. The highlight of the year is around Thanksgiving when stores have loss leader turkeys on sale. We drive from store to store (they're clustered, which is handy) in one trip, usually ending up with ten to twelve turkeys that fill up the chest freezer. Come January stores often will have them on sale again trying to free up space during the part of the year with low amount of turkey buying. Those replace any turkeys we cooked during the holidays. We also once bought 1/4 of a cow, which we'll probably do again in the summer.
ck2 4y ago
I've been thinking of doing that for a decade now but be aware that modern chest fridges are built so cheaply they do not have the same insulation level as old-school chest fridges. ie. if you are getting it from walmart for $100, it's probably garbage insulation and the compressor will run all the time
Markoff 4y ago
Lot of vertical fridge inefficiency could be simply resolved by having glass door, so you could check content without opening the door and then just quickly go for things you want. But yeah it's convenience over efficiency and it would require also a lot of empty space above fridge which can be ulitized inb much better way, while there is hardly any space wasted above my ~210cm tall fridge and I still use the top to store some things which I could not to with chest fridge.
WaitWaitWha 4y ago
The gold is in the comments. Thank you for all the ingenious ideas for a chest-style refrigerator/freezer. I have a need for one, and the tips and tricks posted here will save energy and make some old folks very happy. So, thanks.
bobbobbobsteve 4y ago
Where I live they drive the biggest pickup trucks imaginable mostly to piss off anyone who thinks the environment or planet matters. Sometimes they purposefully billow black smoke from those same giant pickup trucks just to provoke anyone who cares. Do you think many people in that world will inconvenience themselves enough to use this refrigerator? Yeah, I didn't think so either. Our planet is so fucked, but hey, we still have the freedom to display our total lack of respect for other beings.
airbreather 4y ago
Another related concept - have a chest freezer and cycle through frozen 2 or 3 litre soft drink bottles full of glycol that you put in a small/med well insulated cooler you use as a "day fridge". Most people keep way more than they should or need in a fridge, and often best to go straight to freezer to avoid wastage if you are not right on to eating leftovers. So this does not save energy because you don't run a fridge, you use extra in the freezer for the glycol bottles bthan if you just used it as a freezer, but your fridge is now small with a top lid instead of front doors, and you can heavily insulate a cooler very easily to make it super efficient. "Fridges use more energy than any other single appliance in a typical Australian home." - https://hipages.com.au/article/energy_efficient_fridges_and_freezers https://hipages.com.au/article/energy_efficient_fridges_and_... Then there is milk, butter, veges etc that easily fit in 65l cooler for most families.
- ch4s3 4y ago
  Salted butter doesn't even need to be refrigerated if you're eating it regularly and keep it covered.
Whatarethese 4y ago
Mathias Wendell did a YouTube video on the efficiency of chest freezers. Good watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaKnR1Uz3bg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaKnR1Uz3bg
cmcconomy 4y ago
Why don't they make chest fridge/freezers with a carousel built in that lets you cycle baskets up and around; coupled with a glass ceiling/door you could see what's inside and bring it up before you open it!
1970-01-01 4y ago
Note the kit they refer is for 220VAC.
JohnJamesRambo 4y ago
>A modern-era Energy Star-rated fridge, by comparison, might only use 350 kWh annually. At the same $.10 per kWh price, that's around $.10 a day, $2.9 per month and $35 per year I admire efficiency a lot but I don’t think digging around in a chest freezer is worth saving $31.50 a year. Others may feel differently.
- callmeal 4y ago
  Assuming half the taxpaying households in the US did that - 80 million x $31.5 = approx $2.5 Billion a year. Wow. That is something amazing - just goes to show how wasteful our society is.
devenson 4y ago
His solution is missing a very small fan to even out the temperature stratifications inside.
deleted 4y ago
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Damogran6 4y ago
Setting up a Battery/Inverter/Converter system for the RV...this has me thinking it would be a great thing to have in an RV.
rockostrich 4y ago
Using chest freezers with an inkbird (or other PID temperature controller) is very common in beer homebrewing for kegerators or temperature controlling fermentation. I have 2 (a 5 cu ft one for fermentation and a 7 cu ft one for a kegerator) and they both rarely run. I still have a normal upright fridge in my kitchen though. I think it's take some clever planning to make it so that a chest freezer fits into a kitchen decor since floor/counter space is usually the toughest thing to save when designing a kitchen.
kazinator 4y ago
Good luck with that in an affordable apartment in a big city.
bootsup 4y ago
See also Joey Hess's low energy fridge: http://joeyh.name/offgrid/fridge/ http://joeyh.name/offgrid/fridge/ Joey's known for the Debian installer and git-annex, among other things.
hedora 4y ago
Don't make the mistake I did: When moving such a fridge, you need to leave it powered off for a long time before plugging it back in (and probably before initially moving it, just to be safe). Otherwise, the cheap compressors they use will foul the coolant lines with oil, ruining the fridge. The purpose of waiting is to allow anything that started to slosh up time to trickle back down. Also, keep the fridge as level as possible while moving it.
SergeAx 4y ago
Good napkin calculus exercise: how much the extra square meter of the kitchen in a typical apartment costs? (For US readers: most fridge users in the world are living in apartments, not houses). Because you cannot just add one square meter there, size of the kitchen is predetermined by an architect. So in order to use a chest instead of vertical design one have to rent or buy a bigger apartment. And then let's calculate extra heating/air conditioning cost for those bigger apartment too. It's good to live in a big house and have a choice. But realistically almost no one else has that choice.

245 points by kome 4y ago

ClassyJacket 4y ago

Couldn't you get the best of both worlds by having an upright fridge with drawers?

contravariant 4y ago
You could find out by filling a drawer with dry ice and water and trying to open it without the smoke spilling out. Seems to me a chest fridge is simpler.
rob74 4y ago
The advantage of a chest-style freezer/fridge is that cold air is trapped inside because the only opening is at the top. With drawers, the cold air from the drawers above the open one will still partly spill out. Plus then you have more seams that might not close perfectly than with a door.
- lordnacho 4y ago
  Yes that's all true but is the difference worth the money vs convenience tradeoff? I've used chest freezers before and it's not great to lean down to lift a large chunk of meat out of.
  - pmontra 4y ago
    You are right but the convenience I was thinking about is mostly the floor space. Many people living in cities have small houses and space is literally at a premium. The extra electricity cost of a vertical fridge could be offset by the cost of the space on the floor to accommodate the equivalent chest fridge. About that other kind of convenience, shouldn't a chest fridge be long and shallow to have everything reachable from the opening without having to lift stuff and dig?
    - nordsieck 4y ago
      > About that other kind of convenience, shouldn't a chest fridge be long and shallow to have everything reachable from the opening without having to lift stuff and dig? There's a tradeoff between interior volume and convenience. And since most people who want convenience get a vertical model, I think interior volume wins a lot of the time. Someone who buys 1/2 of a cow, or takes home a deer just needs to freeze the whole thing. They don't necessarily need convenient access to all of the contents.
    - bluebill 4y ago
      What would happen if you could get the chest freezer where the door doesn't swing open vertical, but rises vertical upwards? The door could become a work surface. When you need access, you could push a button, or lift it and the entire door would lift straight up. Anything on top, would remain in place. Now for something like this to work it would need a series of shelves (grated shelves to allow the cold air to remain inside) on the interior that could move up. Sort of like a vertical lazy susan. Essentially, the chest freezer could become part of the kitchen work surfaces or it could be come an island work area, not taking up valuable real estate - it would be the valuable real estate. I have always thought this could be the way instead of vertical standing models.
      - pmontra 4y ago
        I can imagine a permanently closed fridge with inspection cameras inside and an app to select which box to take out. Then something like this [1] will deliver the box to a tiny opening acting as an airlock, or take a box and park it inside. And of course $499 upfront plus $99 per month for the app, advertising, and front door delivery to refill empty boxes, and no self serviceable parts, and mandatory subscription to a $19 monthly cleaning service, and... I think I could keep going on like this for a while. Lots of ideas for a front camera /s [1] https://www.pouted.com/fully-automated-car-parking-systems/ https://www.pouted.com/fully-automated-car-parking-systems/
pja 4y ago
Not quite as good, but much better than open shelves. Our upright fridge freezer has deep drawers in the freezer compartment, presumably for this reason.
01acheru 4y ago
Or a chest fridge with vertical drawers (:
- h0l0cube 4y ago
  A cursory Google seems to say this is not a thing, but I don’t see why it couldn’t be, apart from having almost no market to justify its complicated manufacture.. and sliding baskets are probably cheaper and more practical

01acheru 4y ago

The only thing worse than vertical fridges are those supermarket fridges that are both vertical and doorless. Those should be banned and IIRC in some countries supermarkets must have fridges with doors (I think France is one of those).

Sakos 4y ago
What country has those monstrosities? Never seen them
- yurishimo 4y ago
  The US has some, usually in the deli/cheese section.[0] It's the big shelf in the center of the image. The freezer section has doors for more effective temperature control. 0: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/austin-texas-circa-march-2017-600w-1094163149.jpg https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/austin-texas-circa-...
- fyhn 4y ago
  Fairly common in Norway
- pdw 4y ago
  If you do a google image search for "supermarket fridge", half of the results are doorless.
  - Sakos 4y ago
    Doesn't really answer the question.
- dools 4y ago
  All the meat and dairy, and some vegetables are in completely open refrigerators in most Australian supermarkets, although they’re also air conditioned so any loss of cold air is just more air conditioning really
- dijit 4y ago
  UK has them. Like on this picture: https://www.grocerygazette.co.uk/2021/11/09/supermarket-fridge-greener/ https://www.grocerygazette.co.uk/2021/11/09/supermarket-frid...

danuker 4y ago

My parents' ancient fridge consumes 2kWh a day. They refuse to buy a new one because it hasn't broken down yet.

pbhjpbhj 4y ago
What's the equivalent energy cost of a new fridge though? And it's not just that, there's the pollution of dumping the old one (how much refrigerant will be leaked? how much plastic sent to landfill?). And there's costs of the new one that aren't factored in, like transporting it halfway around the World. I wish government put money into guidance on these matters for domestic goods.
- jve 4y ago
  Mine is ~8 years old Samsung with i don't know which energy efficiency class: 1,1-1,3kWh/24h Vertical freezer with some 7 chests which is many more years older takes 0,6-1kWh/24h - probably depends when we open it and when not. Probably better to look at monthly (October) stats: 38,64kWh Fridge, 21,81kWh for freezer. Hmm, August 40/35; July 27/24. Dunno why it fluctuates so much. Ofcourse, October was heating season, but that doesn't seem to impact freezer for worse. Which is weird - it is 2 meters apart from heat source. But yeah, summer could hahve
haliskerbas 4y ago
Same, bought a kill-a-watt[1] device to show the $ directly and that helped. Good luck! 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_A_Watt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_A_Watt
vladvasiliu 4y ago
My new fridge consumes 1.1 kWh a day. I checked this while I was away on vacantion, so the door wasn't opened for 3 weeks. Depending on electricity prices, it's probably a better call to not change it.
- Slartie 4y ago
  That's pretty high though. I've measured my brand new chest fridge (which I operate as a cooler, thus only set to 5 degrees celsius) recently and it consumes 0.2kWh/d. My old vertical fridge/freezer combo which is over 10 years old consumes 0.72kWh/d (that one is operated normally). Both are opened multiple times per day.

rhn_mk1 4y ago

A brilliant example of how energy-efficiency plays against space-efficiency.

snakeboy 4y ago

Dumb question: Can I lay down my vertical door fridge on its back to achieve these efficiency gains?

masklinn 4y ago
I don’t think so. Part of it is that chests tend to have more insulation (also the reason why mini-fridges are absolute dreck efficiency wise), and the coolant / radiator circuit won’t be set up properly: in a traditional vertical fridge the coolant circuit is through the back or racks (for freezers) and the radiator are on the back, if you lay it on its back the radiator is now on the bottom, and trying to heat up the insulation, with the coolant circuit also at the bottom.
deleted 4y ago
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ben_bai 4y ago
No, because the heat-pump (compressor) in the back needs to stand upright. Also the back has cooling fins that need air circulation FYI: After transport you need to wait some time to let the oil in the compressor settle before turning it on. A level ground is also highly recommended.
- defrost 4y ago
  These can be detached and rotated ...
  - freeqaz 4y ago
    You'd have to sweat together new copper fittings though and probably deal with draining + recharging the refrigerant lines. Not a trivial project for a novice.
    - ErikCorry 4y ago
      And if you accidentally just vent the refrigerant lines instead of draining then you can release a year's worth of global warming in about 20 seconds. Best not to try.

captn3m0 4y ago

More details on this PDF: https://mtbest.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2021/03/chest_fridge_1.pdf https://mtbest.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/12/2021/03/chest...

a012 4y ago

I guess their device is something similar to the homebrewing tool that I use Inkbird to control fridge/freezer temperature. Except from the less wasting cold air, I dislike the chest freezer for food storage because it's difficult to organize and then find things at the bottom.

pbhjpbhj 4y ago

I've wondered about fitting an inner door on each shelf of the fridge. I wonder if you'd save enough energy to warrant manufacture and shipping of clip-on doors?

helpfulmandrill 4y ago

Yes, but who has the space?

LeoPanthera 4y ago
We keep ours in the garage.
2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
Most people with a basement, garage or root cellar.

helpfulmandrill 4y ago

Jesus, have you seen the rest of the website that article was originally published on, though. "Consciousness and Immortality". Alright mate.

kleiba 4y ago
Check out the Q&A section on that site: Q2: It's impossible to go to the other end of the galaxy, live there for a few days, and come back in 10 days, even at the speed of light. How do you explain your trip? A: Michel told me that his journey was made using what he called "trans-substantiation". The main part of the galactic journey does not take place in space-time, but outside it. You can only leave space-time (or return to it) at a sufficient distance from the nearest star, otherwise you will explode.
lachstar-x 4y ago
I have bought several of his multicolour chakra tshirts over the years and find them very soothing to wear. Indoors.

sdfjkl 4y ago

This has never bothered me until moving on a boat, where top-loading fridges (often ice boxes with a compressor kit retrofitted) are the norm. Because energy supply is very limited. They are integrated into the kitchen work surface and double as a temporary workspace when closed. So it's possible to save space _and_ energy. Now the standup kitchen fridges in houses really bother me. Every time I see someone open one, I imagine seeing all that cold air being sucked out by the opening door and falling on the ground.

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
You can feel it on summer days, if you dont have AC and get something from the fridge on your bare feet.
mihaaly 4y ago
What irritates me (also friends) is relatives opening it and standing their thinking about the food, keeping it open for a minute or more without actual activity. I wonder if transparent door would be a gain here, with worse thermal insulation but allowing to locate things and contemplate before opening the door and allowing the cold to escape to the floor.
- blensor 4y ago
  Does it make much of a difference if you keep it open for 20 seconds or 2 minutes? I imagine that as soon as most of the cool air has flowed out of it (which should happen quite quickly), the additional energy loss is minimal There are compromise versions where there is a small door at half height in the big door, through which you can get the bottles/milk crates out of the side of the door. What I am wondering is if there is a way to solve this with at technical solution that keeps the current standup design but makes it energy efficient. For example: An opening at the bottom of the door that sucks cold air in when the door opens and transports it to the top back of the compartment. While open, most of the cold air would be saved and it's only a ventilator that's running for a few seconds
- londons_explore 4y ago
  Many fridges start beeping after 30 seconds of the door being open. People quickly learn to ignore the beep while they "quickly make breakfast" and then put the sausages and eggs back in the fridge and close the door after eating breakfast. #billpayerfrustratedwithhisfamily

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

The solutions? Have two transparent interior rolling shutters. Open only one section on selection motion. Or just have the best of both worlds, a chest fridge, with a transparent interior, which moves upward, allowing access via a rolling shutter. Or have a airlock, were a automated retrieving gadget brings you your product in standardized containers? Similar to ice cream dispsensers or softdrink coolers? Basically a portal crane traversing the chest cooler, extracting a "cooling" pillar on demand, which then only guarants acess on demand.

andbberger 4y ago
or, hear me out, chest fridges
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  I hear you, treasure island decorated fridges. The treasure of frostbeard, a map with a hidden opening button on top, wood panneling on the side..
HPsquared 4y ago
Or.. drawers (optionally with clear fronts). Each drawer is effectively a mini chest fridge.
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  Something like a vertical apothecary cabinet, leaving the cold air down in the fridge.
LorenPechtel 4y ago
I've wondered if it might be more energy efficient to build home systems more like commercial ones. Make it walk-in but with a double door so you don't spill all the cold air when you open it. The freezer spills into the refrigerator so the cold isn't lost. Since it's built in size is of minimal importance and you can put a lot of insulation on it.

querez 4y ago

> My chest fridge [...] consumes about 0.1 kWh a day. This fridge is 10 to 20 times more energy efficient than typical household fridges on the market today. According to a test report by Stiftung Warentest (the German equivalent to Consumer Reports), my vertical fridge consumes ~ 0.4-0.5 kWh / day. While that is more, it's nowhere close to the 10x-20x given by this guy.

kleiba 4y ago
Your fridge is probably half the size of an average American fridge.
- goodpoint 4y ago
  - nobrains 4y ago
    good point goodpoint
  - Mountain_Skies 4y ago
    Western Europeans are rapidly gaining on Americans but it's funny to see how much in denial they are about it even though it's impossible to miss when leaving the house.
  - mihaaly 4y ago
    The movie In Bruges comes to mind, the scene at the tower between Colin Farrell and the American tourists. (... also a bar in SF where I was on the smaller end of males with 1.9m and 102kg)
- thaumasiotes 4y ago
  > half the size This made me think. I would kind of expect the energy consumption of a fridge to be related to the surface area of the cooled volume rather than the volume itself. It's not necessary to spend any energy cooling air that is already surrounded by equally cold air. Assuming all fridges are cubes, doubling the volume of the fridge will increase the surface area by a factor of 2^{2/3} = 59%. This will also be true if the fridge has any rectangular dimensions and you double the volume by scaling it up evenly in all three dimensions. Things are more complicated if you scale the dimensions of the fridge unevenly.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

badcppdev 4y ago

There are major usability issues with chest fridges. * People in wheelchairs. * Children and shorter people. * Cleaning is hard if there are messes or spills. * You can't see what's in a chest fridge very easily which is a problem if there is more than one person in the household. * Shelves are really useful when you have things that can't be stacked on top of one another

pjc50 4y ago
Never mind that, the major issue is real estate: a horizontal fridge uses twice the real estate, and in a Western country the cost of that small patch of ground will vastly exceed the running costs of the fridge.
- i_am_proteus 4y ago
  It's possible to engineer around hurdles like this: - Put the fridge under a counter on rollers (with a cableway for the necessary electrical hookup). - Put rolling shelves(with lips) inside the fridge to allow ready access to the bottom storage areas. Even if consumers won't trade off a little bit of convenience for energy efficiency today, they probably will when electricity is much more expensive.
  - badcppdev 4y ago
    Do you feel that a vertical fridge with a 'normal' outer door and individual drawers or doors in both the fridge and freezer sections could compartmentalise the fridge and give better energy efficiency and require fewer engineering changes? I'm inclined to think that engineering improvements to a vertical fridge is easier than the changes required for a chest fridge.
laputan_machine 4y ago
Then we should definitely never use them. Honestly, this line of reasoning really grates my gears. Yeah a tiny portion of people can't use them, so nobody should use them, I shouldn't put one in my house, etc. If that's not what you're stating, then what _are_ you stating? I don't get it.

nzach 4y ago

Technology Connections did a video[0] about this some time ago. [0] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGAhWgkKlHI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGAhWgkKlHI

Cthulhu_ 4y ago

Weird that this is just an article that quotes the source verbatim: https://mtbest.net/chest-fridge/ https://mtbest.net/chest-fridge/ Submitters, can you please link to the original source if the one you link to adds no value?

Veen 4y ago
There is a little value to the current link. I didn't know about No Tech Magazine, but now I do. It lead me to read several other interesting articles, which would not have been the case if I'd landed on the fridge article's original source.
jna_sh 4y ago
It might be “weird” that this link was submitted to HN, but the purpose of No Tech Magazine is to host things that Low Tech Magazine links to, to ensure the articles don’t suffer link rot.

subpixel 4y ago

I have a chest freezer in the garage. It’s great, it costs very little to run. But it’s a beast to organize. For a while we had piles of loose frozen things, which eventually got all mixed up, so we had no idea what was hiding in there. Now I have some plastic crates stacked inside - but the bottom level is a mystery bc nobody’s ever wants to lift out a 20lb crate to see what lies beneath.

thedanbob 4y ago
My wife did this with ours but took it a step further: the has a whiteboard in the kitchen with an inventory of exactly what we have in the chest freezer. It works well, except for once in a while when she takes something out but forgets to update the inventory. I offered to build her a barcode system but so far she hasn’t taken me up on it :p
- bengale 4y ago
  Our chest freezer is white and works basically as its own whiteboard. We just scrawl on the top with dry wipe markers what's in there.
- chiefalchemist 4y ago
  What about barcodes? Not expensive. Should offer a quick return.
- Loughla 4y ago
  We just write on the lid of the freezers we have. They're white, so why not?
nickcotter 4y ago
We had a power cut while on holiday. No real damage or loss but the bottom layer is now re-frozen icecream, probably caused by something not quite sealed being stacked sideways.
- Loughla 4y ago
  We keep a cool whip container filled with water, with a quarter under the lid, on top of the water in the top of our freezer. Then, when (not if) we lose power for a while, we duct tape the lid to the freezers closed. Once power comes back on, we check the quarter. It's a pretty good indicator of what we should get rid of, based on how far in the container the quarter has sunk and re-frozen.

falcor84 4y ago

Am I the only one who found the physical unit of kWh/day really confusing? If there's anyone else like me who prefers Watts, this equates to an average power consumption of slightly over 4W (100watt*h over 24 hours).

tapland 4y ago
With appliances kWh/day is useful since you count costs in kWh
tecleandor 4y ago
Well, the thing is you can easily calculate your energy expense or your battery storage, given its calculated in watts/hour.
capekwasright 4y ago
It's a little awkward, but it makes sense in the context of determining an energy budget or the daily operating cost on grid power.
HPsquared 4y ago
Watts are handy if your electricity is priced around 11.4 cents per kWh. If that's the case, 1 Watt continuously = 1 USD per year. (scale up or down to suit your tariff) (1 watt = 8.76 kWh/yr)

MrMid 4y ago

We made such chest fridge from an old freezer, and have been using it for almost a year now. The floor space it takes isn't that concerning, as it doubles as a counter top. It really is very efficient. The only problem we have is humidity. With everyday use, a lot of condensed water gets stuck inside, the humidity goes near 100 % and the moulds really like that. We tried many things, including making a drain hole inside, but nothing helped. We "solved" it with putting 1 kg of adsorbent (silica gel) on the bottom. It lasts about two months between regenerations, so it is quite usable this way.

HPsquared 4y ago
With a regular fridge/freezer the steady-state relative humidity should be quite low because the cooling coils will condense out a lot of the water vapour, and drain it out a hole in the back to evaporate outside the enclosure. The cooling coil is always going to be the coldest surface within the enclosure, therefore that's where the water vapour would tend to condense. Don't chest fridges have a similar mechanism? Perhaps the problem is things being too closely-packed, so the air can't circulate - so that when the lid is opened and water vapour let in from outside, it condenses on the food etc - but this isn't then removed by the mechanism above.
- MrMid 4y ago
  The cooling in this freezer is all around the walls, and the condensed water stays on the walls and then falls down on the bottom. There was originally no drain hole, and even adding the drain hole didn't solve the problem. It was designed as a freezer, not a fridge, after all.
jrs235 4y ago
How do YOU regenerate the silica gel? Just let it try out? Set in sun? Bake? I'm just genuinely curious. Thanks!
- r2_pilot 4y ago
  I use colored indicator silica beads for desiccant purposes and when the indicator shows they're "wet"/green, I spread them evenly on a baking sheet with foil and bake them at the recommended temp, stirring occasionally, until they turn back orange.

kohlerm 4y ago

pretty standard in german households

Slartie 4y ago
Actually not. A lot of people have a freezer, but one set to "fridge mode" (temperature greater 0 degrees celsius)? I have a chest fridge that I use like this, but I searched a while to find one which has a thermostat supporting temperatures above 0 degrees celsius. Most of them only support freezing, and you have to construct some custom temperature-controlled power on/off mechanism (I actually did that with my old device which could only freeze) to use it as a fridge.

moffkalast 4y ago

> The chest-style refrigerator is surprisingly practical and convenient to use. Except it's neither of those things and why the normal side opening fridge is the prevalent kind despite its poor power efficiency. It occupies double the floor area for half the storage, and you have to take everything out to access the bottom most shelves. Even on boats where power efficiency is critical, I've seen people go for the side opening type if they possibly can, because it's just that much more practical.

PainfullyNormal 4y ago
> and you have to take everything out to access the bottom most area. And an ice pick, if you live anywhere even slightly humid.
- pcdoodle 4y ago
  This is a fridge, not a freezer. PS: if you're buying a freezer to convert, pick one without a defrost cycle.
  - HPsquared 4y ago
    That's even worse then - at least if the owner of a chest freezer forgets about something at the bottom layer, it's not going to become hazardous. With a fridge on the other hand, most things have a very finite lifespan before they become mouldy etc.
    - vanderZwan 4y ago
      How is this different from a regular fridge? The main reason people forget stuff in the freezer is because it's used as a freezer, for long-term storage. The shape isn't the biggest part of that problem. If you use this as a fridge you won't have the same issues. edit: having said that, the accumulation of condensed water at the bottom that some other commenters mentions seems like a real problem that needs a dedicated solution.

jacknews 4y ago

I had a vertical fridge-freezer (Bosch I think), where the fridge and freezer were separate compartments, but behind the main door, the freezer had slide-out drawers instead of shelves. I always thought that design would also work well for the fridge section. Instead of shelves, you have drawers, which better keep the cold air in, and are also easier to use - no more reaching over things to get something at the back of the shelf. Or perhaps there's a market for some kind of sliding drawer to replace shelves in existing machines. Unfortunately I think they are all completely non-standard sizes. Another area that is crying out for standardization, modularity etc.

saiya-jin 4y ago
what we have is a mix - some drawers on the bottom (2 layers), and shelves on top (3 layers IIRC). It mixes nicely, since shelves have bigger 'real capacity' in my opinion and its easier to put in non-standard shapes

mnw21cam 4y ago

I have a large American-style fridge/freezer. I measured the power consumption, and it came out as an average of 70W, or 1.68kWh/day. For the size of fridge, this isn't bad. However, I was slightly surprised to see that this was more than our use of electricity for all cooking activities - that is, oven, kettle, microwave, slow cooker, toaster. I have a gas hob - if this were not the case, I suppose it would be the other way around. But still, that one fridge was a very significant portion of the total house electricity use.

deleted 4y ago
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consp 4y ago
I have a separate freezer/fridge and they amount to about the same as a standard European sized fridge (so no double door US style things) and the freezer uses about 63W when on and the fridge about 58W. I guess the compressors are of the same order but the freezer simply runs longer. Daily usage is about 0.9-0.92kWh. Less if you don't open them, more if you put something in the freezer/fridge which is not cold. I tried measuring if getting a new one would save power and was affordable somewhat cost effective but the short story is that the upfront cost could only be recuperated even by a tiny bit when kWh prices rise far into the 1 Euro/kWh.

coldtea 4y ago

If access and storage area per floor area is the problem for chest fridges, would a fridge with sliding drawer-style shelves be a good compromise? The drawer compartments could have holes (for air to circulate) when closed (like current "grill" shelves), and a mechanism that closes them and isolates the drawn-out drawer from the one below and above it. This way you lose at most one drawer worth of cold air and heat only one drawer worth of products. The mechanism would be quite simple to build (just mechanical, shouldn't need any fancy electronics). The downside being that you would have rigid fixed compartments (each shelve's size) whereas fridges tend to have adjustable shelves.

trabant00 4y ago

Freezers can be vertical as you don't require easy access multiple times a day, don't require shelves as solid frozen food can be stacked without getting squished, you don't put pots, plates, etc in them, don't require drawers as you don't want multiple temperature and humidity zones, and on and on and on. The efficiency increase is also greatly exaggerated in the article. For one see the comment by avian in here. Secondly that converted freezer has a lot more insulation than a fridge because of its thicker walls (which take more space) and also the lack of ventilation for moisture than any modern fridge has. And thirdly we have no real comparison with the same usage, as far as I know that person might open it every 2 days. If we ignore all those problems we might as well weld a box shut and be happy with perfect efficiency at zero usability.

jansan 4y ago

Something that meany seem to be missing in the comments is that this is a fridge (for cooling stuff), not a freezer (for deep.freezing stuff). He turned the freezer into a fridge, which seems to make sense, as gravity keeps the cold air better in a horizontal fridge. THey are not as practical, as you have to stack stuff onto each other and it is easier to find space for a vertical fridge in a kitchen, but from a pure energy consumtion perspective this makes sense. If the mentioned energy consumtion is correct, it is really quite low. A good new fidge that size without freezer uses about 90 kWh per year, which is about twice as much as his fridge.

hnrodey 4y ago

In October we bought a new chest freezer (16 cu ft) and it's currently using about .75 kWh per day as measured by Emporia Vue. https://www.emporiaenergy.com/how-the-vue-energy-monitor-works https://www.emporiaenergy.com/how-the-vue-energy-monitor-wor... https://www.homedepot.com/p/Whirlpool-16-cu-ft-Manual-Defrost-Residential-Convertible-Freezer-in-White-WZC5216LW/319653811 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Whirlpool-16-cu-ft-Manual-Defros...

wumms 4y ago
The whole domain https://www.homedepot.com/ https://www.homedepot.com/ is down for me - I get "Access Denied" ("You don't have permission to access "http://www.homedepot.com/ http://www.homedepot.com/" on this server.").
- MandieD 4y ago
  It’s geofenced - if I access it directly from my residential connection in Germany, I get the same, but if I use my Tailscale exit node in the US, it works fine.
  - wumms 4y ago
    Thanks! I just tried it using Tor (ExitNodes {us}) and it works as well.

sidewndr46 4y ago

You can offset this by keeping the vertical fridge or freezer full of bottled waters if you don't use all the space. It actually makes it easier for the fridge to maintain temperature since the thermal mass inside is higher. The bottles take up the volume that would otherwise be cold air. The bottles help a bit obstructing the outflow of cold air as well.

LorenPechtel 4y ago
But what's the cost of cooling those bottles when they replace something that was removed? I like the idea of thermal mass in a refrigerator or freezer (it took me a while to figure out why milk at home would never last to it's shelf date--the grocery store has a huge thermal mass to it's dairy cases, the milk on the shelf gets much less exposure to warm air than the milk at home) but if you're going to eliminate dead air space I think it's best done with empty boxes, not water.

lifeisstillgood 4y ago

Is my maths right here? He claims that the average fridge in average home is 1kwh per day (quick google suggests is correct #). And he claims to run his on 0.1kwh. So roughly roughly thats 1kwh per day saving. If everyone in Uk (about 25 million households) used his fridge it would save 25m kwh / day is 25 GWh / day or 9125 Gwh or 9Tera Wh per year? UK uses 300 Tera Wh per year of elec. (UN source from datacommons.org) So changing fridges will save 1/30 of electrical use. Just how much of an argument is there for funding a "not so optional" change to peoples lifestyles and domestic arrangements? Some combination of household goods, household insulation, reduced car useage # https://www.energybot.com/energy-usage/refrigerator.html https://www.energybot.com/energy-usage/refrigerator.html

dplgk 4y ago

In the winter, when it's quite cold out, I often wonder why I'm paying to make cold air when there is free cold air available outside. What about a fridge that takes in air from outdoors?

Toutouxc 4y ago
If you're willing to put a hole in your wall, preferably somewhere convenient, where you can also place the fridge, then yes, that could be useful.
MandieD 4y ago
I think of the shaded parts back porch as a giant walk-in (out?) fridge most of the winter, and have considered getting someone’s discarded chest freezer mostly to reduce the likelihood of critters and to moderate the effects of a slight overnight freeze.
verisimilitude 4y ago
Agreed! We need an electrified version of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_cooler_(cabinet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_cooler_(cabinet)
- airbreather 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolgardie_safe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolgardie_safe
Tade0 4y ago
I see it as a fairly energy-efficient way to get additional warmth - after all it's a heat pump. That being said my mother keeps all the Christmas food on the balcony because it solves both the cooling and storage space problems.
LorenPechtel 4y ago
Yeah, I really wish there was more focus on not wasting energy. Off the top of my head: We have a normal furnace/air conditioner combo (I live in a climate where summer air conditioning is essential), it has no concept of outside air temperature. I really would like a system where it doesn't have the concept of being set to cool/off/heat, but rather a concept of ideal temperature/heat-to/cool-to. Before running the high energy systems it looks at the outside air temp to see if it would be more efficient to turn on a fan to bring in outside air. It also will use that fan to adjust the temperature towards ideal but will not use the high energy systems to do so. The HVAC should also be able to communicate with the refrigerator. If heat is desired in the house the refrigerator uses coils inside the house to dispose of it's waste heat. If heat is not desired it uses outside coils.

itamarst 4y ago

You can buy chest freezers that have conversion to refrigerator as a built-in feature, e.g. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/amana-16-cu-ft-chest-freezer-with-basket-white/6476505.p?skuId=6476505 https://www.bestbuy.com/site/amana-16-cu-ft-chest-freezer-wi... (Appears common enough that BestBuy has it as a search flag).

PYTHONDJANGO 4y ago

I would like to suggest to live without a fridge - it is absolutely possible. Of course it depends on many things, but if you adapt a little bit you will not need a fridge. Fresh food is more healthy, anyway. I just got into the situation of living without a fridge while constantly travelling between two places. After a while I realized that I do not need a fridge at all. Even after settling on one place I still do not need it. Try it yourself.

smolder 4y ago
Can I ask where you live? I know this attitude is common in some cultures more than others. I also know the viability of eating a healthy diet without your own refrigeration in some places will be next to impossible. Bulk frozen vegetables are pretty important when you don't have local access to fresh ones.
LorenPechtel 4y ago
Which means a lot of travel to buy food. No refrigeration = daily trips to the store. It also means a lot more discarded packaging because you have to buy highly perishable stuff in much smaller packages.

Mountain_Skies 4y ago

I have one in my garage and use it as a meat buffer. When there's a good sale, we stock up. Over the next months, we draw down the supply, topping back up if there's another exceptional sale. The highlight of the year is around Thanksgiving when stores have loss leader turkeys on sale. We drive from store to store (they're clustered, which is handy) in one trip, usually ending up with ten to twelve turkeys that fill up the chest freezer. Come January stores often will have them on sale again trying to free up space during the part of the year with low amount of turkey buying. Those replace any turkeys we cooked during the holidays. We also once bought 1/4 of a cow, which we'll probably do again in the summer.

ck2 4y ago

I've been thinking of doing that for a decade now but be aware that modern chest fridges are built so cheaply they do not have the same insulation level as old-school chest fridges. ie. if you are getting it from walmart for $100, it's probably garbage insulation and the compressor will run all the time

Markoff 4y ago

Lot of vertical fridge inefficiency could be simply resolved by having glass door, so you could check content without opening the door and then just quickly go for things you want. But yeah it's convenience over efficiency and it would require also a lot of empty space above fridge which can be ulitized inb much better way, while there is hardly any space wasted above my ~210cm tall fridge and I still use the top to store some things which I could not to with chest fridge.

WaitWaitWha 4y ago

The gold is in the comments. Thank you for all the ingenious ideas for a chest-style refrigerator/freezer. I have a need for one, and the tips and tricks posted here will save energy and make some old folks very happy. So, thanks.

bobbobbobsteve 4y ago

Where I live they drive the biggest pickup trucks imaginable mostly to piss off anyone who thinks the environment or planet matters. Sometimes they purposefully billow black smoke from those same giant pickup trucks just to provoke anyone who cares. Do you think many people in that world will inconvenience themselves enough to use this refrigerator? Yeah, I didn't think so either. Our planet is so fucked, but hey, we still have the freedom to display our total lack of respect for other beings.

airbreather 4y ago

Another related concept - have a chest freezer and cycle through frozen 2 or 3 litre soft drink bottles full of glycol that you put in a small/med well insulated cooler you use as a "day fridge". Most people keep way more than they should or need in a fridge, and often best to go straight to freezer to avoid wastage if you are not right on to eating leftovers. So this does not save energy because you don't run a fridge, you use extra in the freezer for the glycol bottles bthan if you just used it as a freezer, but your fridge is now small with a top lid instead of front doors, and you can heavily insulate a cooler very easily to make it super efficient. "Fridges use more energy than any other single appliance in a typical Australian home." - https://hipages.com.au/article/energy_efficient_fridges_and_freezers https://hipages.com.au/article/energy_efficient_fridges_and_... Then there is milk, butter, veges etc that easily fit in 65l cooler for most families.

ch4s3 4y ago
Salted butter doesn't even need to be refrigerated if you're eating it regularly and keep it covered.

Whatarethese 4y ago

Mathias Wendell did a YouTube video on the efficiency of chest freezers. Good watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaKnR1Uz3bg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iaKnR1Uz3bg

cmcconomy 4y ago

Why don't they make chest fridge/freezers with a carousel built in that lets you cycle baskets up and around; coupled with a glass ceiling/door you could see what's inside and bring it up before you open it!

1970-01-01 4y ago

Note the kit they refer is for 220VAC.

JohnJamesRambo 4y ago

>A modern-era Energy Star-rated fridge, by comparison, might only use 350 kWh annually. At the same $.10 per kWh price, that's around $.10 a day, $2.9 per month and $35 per year I admire efficiency a lot but I don’t think digging around in a chest freezer is worth saving $31.50 a year. Others may feel differently.

callmeal 4y ago
Assuming half the taxpaying households in the US did that - 80 million x $31.5 = approx $2.5 Billion a year. Wow. That is something amazing - just goes to show how wasteful our society is.

devenson 4y ago

His solution is missing a very small fan to even out the temperature stratifications inside.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Damogran6 4y ago

Setting up a Battery/Inverter/Converter system for the RV...this has me thinking it would be a great thing to have in an RV.

rockostrich 4y ago

Using chest freezers with an inkbird (or other PID temperature controller) is very common in beer homebrewing for kegerators or temperature controlling fermentation. I have 2 (a 5 cu ft one for fermentation and a 7 cu ft one for a kegerator) and they both rarely run. I still have a normal upright fridge in my kitchen though. I think it's take some clever planning to make it so that a chest freezer fits into a kitchen decor since floor/counter space is usually the toughest thing to save when designing a kitchen.

kazinator 4y ago

Good luck with that in an affordable apartment in a big city.

bootsup 4y ago

See also Joey Hess's low energy fridge: http://joeyh.name/offgrid/fridge/ http://joeyh.name/offgrid/fridge/ Joey's known for the Debian installer and git-annex, among other things.

hedora 4y ago

Don't make the mistake I did: When moving such a fridge, you need to leave it powered off for a long time before plugging it back in (and probably before initially moving it, just to be safe). Otherwise, the cheap compressors they use will foul the coolant lines with oil, ruining the fridge. The purpose of waiting is to allow anything that started to slosh up time to trickle back down. Also, keep the fridge as level as possible while moving it.

SergeAx 4y ago

Good napkin calculus exercise: how much the extra square meter of the kitchen in a typical apartment costs? (For US readers: most fridge users in the world are living in apartments, not houses). Because you cannot just add one square meter there, size of the kitchen is predetermined by an architect. So in order to use a chest instead of vertical design one have to rent or buy a bigger apartment. And then let's calculate extra heating/air conditioning cost for those bigger apartment too. It's good to live in a big house and have a choice. But realistically almost no one else has that choice.