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It's a cool idea, and might be great for a secondary fridge. For a primary fridge though, it's so much more convenient to have direct access to everything throu
by tempestn 7mo ago
It's a cool idea, and might be great for a secondary fridge. For a primary fridge though, it's so much more convenient to have direct access to everything through a vertical door. I like energy efficiency, but I'm willing to pay 300kWh a year (around $40 here) for that convenience, let alone the space efficiency.
- refactor_master 7mo agoMost people in dense urban areas would actually pay less. By going vertical you’re freezing a whole m2 that was otherwise necessarily occupied by the fridge. In most places, 300 kWh is much cheaper than an extra irrevocable m2 for your fridge. Plus, a horizontal fridge is just… convenient. You can’t even put things on top of a vertical fridge.
- hn_throwaway_99 7mo agoI literally don't understand this comment at all. What point are you trying to make?
- frogulis 7mo agoThey seem to have mixed up horizontal and vertical, and if they did, then my reading is that they're saying the cost of the extra floor space (and the loss of the "shelf" space on top of the fridge) when using a chest fridge makes the economics unfavourable for people in dense urban areas, even with the energy savings. At least, I'm hoping that's what they meant. If they really meant horizontal and vertical in the way they used it then I've got no idea either.
- hn_throwaway_99 7mo agoYeah, I understand your first sentence, but the last part of their comment was "Plus, a horizontal fridge is just… convenient. You can’t even put things on top of a vertical fridge." Don't they mean a horizontal fridge is a chest fridge? Which would make it sound like they want their whole comment to be in support of a chest fridge? Which is why none of it makes any sense to me.
- frogulis 7mo agoThat's what makes me think they've simply mixed up horizontal and vertical, because you can't (conveniently) store things on top of a chest fridge, but you can store things on top of a vertical fridge. Basically I think they've got a coherent point if you swap vertical and horizontal throughout their whole comment.
- OJFord 7mo agoI didn't get it until reading your comment, but I think perhaps they meant 'vertical' as in 'it opens vertically' (chest freezer)—i.e. they didn't mix them up exactly, just used them differently than we expected.
- seemaze 7mo agoI put things on top of my vertical fridge all the time. Also, how do you access a chest fridge with items sitting on top of lid?
- qingcharles 7mo agoYou can't. A chest fridge/freezer becomes a gravitational singularity sucking random items from every corner of the kitchen to its lid. You can keep trying to return them to their rightful place but in the end it is a fruitless task as the rate of accumulation becomes faster than your speed of repatriation and the contents of the freezer are eventually lost to time behind the "event horizon" of its surface. source: my lost ice pops
- lostlogin 7mo agoThis happens in our vertical one. I need you to describe the pitfalls of doing the laundry in your Pratchett style!
- TurdF3rguson 7mo agoBut if I put things on top of it, now I can't get at the food. I mean, I have one of these as a meat freezer, and sometimes I put things on top of it, and then my wife gets mad at me and moves that thing somewhere because otherwise nobody can open it. Things on top of my vertical fridge on the other hand (my cat for example), can stay there indefinitely.
- ezst 7mo agoWouldn't a solution be to have the opening on the side and pull it toward you, like a "box on wheels"? As long as the sides of the "box" are thermally insulated, it seems like a sound solution for the stated problem (but certainly not one that's mechanically the cheapest/simplest).
- frogulis 7mo agoA friend suggested a bottom-hinged door like that on a garbage chute, though well sealed, and as wide as the fridge, so the sides of the door don't get in the way of storing long objects in the fridge.
- KPGv2 7mo agoDid you by any chance switch "vertical" and "horizontal" at every point in your comment?
- fwipsy 7mo agoThe words are intrinsically ambiguous. A standard fridge opens horizontally but stands vertically. Is it vertical or horizontal?
- decimalenough 7mo agoHorizontal vs vertical is determined by the orientation of the object's longest dimension. Portrait pictures on a wall and fridges with doors that open out are vertical, landscape pictures on a wall and chest freezers are horizontal.
- Hamuko 7mo agoI have cabinets over my vertical fridge that has things put in it. There's only like a 15 cm gap between for airflow. How do you slap a cabinet on top of a horizontal fridge?
- tshaddox 7mo agoIf you completely remodeled a kitchen around a chest fridge it might not be too terribly inconvenient. But the major blocker is that virtually every kitchen is designed with a perfect spot for a tall, relatively shallow fridge.
- stock_toaster 7mo agoIndeed. I could imagine a very neat one built into the cabinetry where the counter top could be lifted up or something.
- femto 7mo agoIt would be inconvenient to have to clear the counter each time you want to access the fridge.
- throwaway173738 7mo agoI keep my counters largely clear so I can cook, anyway.
- ajb 7mo agoWell, but do you never have to open the fridge to get an ingredient, half way through cooking?
- asutekku 7mo agoIt's inconvenient as soon as you need to get something from the bottom of the fridge, kitchen layout does not change this one at all. And I grew up in a home with multiple chest fridges in addition to a shelved ones so I know the hurdles. They are good to store something you're not accessing all the time though, like frozen berries etc.
- tshaddox 7mo agoI think that inconvenience could be manageable depending on how full the fridge is and what sort of organizing features it has. It’s already pretty inconvenient to get something out of the back of a traditional fridge that is completely full.
- block_dagger 7mo agoCool idea indeed.