[Greenbuilding] finding coils inside (new) chest freezer

[Kathy Cochran]

Reuben,  The fact that you live in a densely populated neighborhood with
grocery stores and community gardens is definitely a plus for your position.
I live out in the country, 3 miles from a small  "expensive" grocery store,
and 18 miles from a "cheap" grocery store.  So in my case, I definitely feel
that a freezer is important.   Good luck with your project!

 

Kathy Cochran

 

From: Reuben Deumling [mailto:9watts at gmail.com] 
Sent: Sunday, December 05, 2010 11:18 AM
To: Kathy Cochran
Cc: Doug Kalmer; greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org
Subject: Re: [Greenbuilding] finding coils inside (new) chest freezer

 

You obviously think a freezer is an essential component of the household
economy. You are not alone. However my interpretation of food storage is
broader. My interest in resilience and minimizing electricity consumption
weighs into my calculation of how to optimally store food. I've lived and
cooked and lived with people who cooked all my life without recourse to a
freezer. Food can be put up in a number of ways, and has been by our
ancestors for millennia. We grow lots of our own food, and also put up food
we don't grow ourselves, and a stand alone freezer is not the only way to
accomplish this. In fact it is the one way that requires an electric grid,
something I'm not counting on being there for the rest of the freezer's life
(or my life, for that matter). 

Something else you might want to know about me is my long standing interest
in shrinking the amount of electricity our household demands for
refrigeration to a quantity that permits me to generate that amount by pedal
power (you would probably be inclined to lock me out of the bicycle shed if
I were yours). I have taken most of the steps toward moving the coils on the
back of our refrigerator so that they will end up on the outside of the
North wall of our kitchen. Whether I can thereby reduce the annual
refrigeration kWh for our household to 60 kWh/yr (my goal) I don't yet know.
Perhaps you can now better understand the prospect of adding an appliance
rated at 286 kWh/yr to our little domestic economy. 

As far as the implications that buying food more often, requires more
gasoline we don't have a car and live in a very dense neighborhood
surrounded by grocery stores and community gardens. We live surrounded by
people we know, many of whom have freezers, but my wife is unwilling to
explore the prospects of sharing/renting/bartering freezer space with
others. 

Reuben Deumling

On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 10:38 AM, Kathy Cochran
<kathys_old_house at goldrush.com> wrote:

You obviously don't cook, or appreciate the value of food storage.  Having a
freezer means that you can take advantage of food specials, etc., and
minimize the use of the automobile to go on grocery shopping trips.  If you
were mine, I would lock you out of the basement and keep you away from the
new freezer.  It also gives you a place to store the harvest of the fruits
and vegetables that you can grow on your own land, if you are so inclined.


 

Those are my thoughts.  Kathy Cochran



 

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