[Greenbuilding] Greenbuilding Digest, Vol 4, Issue 5

[Ross Elliott]

Reuben, why are you ripping open a new freezer? It probably uses less energy
than your TV; newer fridges and freezers are no longer the top energy
suckers in the home. 

Many people believe all the heat coming off the coils represents wasted
energy, but this isn't so. A major percentage of that heat is simply energy
being "pumped" out of the fridge back into the room it originally seeped in
through the insulation from, that's net "free energy". The only energy
really used up in operating a fridge is that used to power the compressor
motor, which in my new, big 18" x 72" vertical freezer is rated to use 370
kWhrs of electricity annually, or about $37. Since half our climate at least
is in "heating mode", the $18 or so worth of electric internal winter heat
gain is, first of all, insignificant and second of all, offsets most of the
cost of whatever energy source I'm otherwise using to provide that same heat
(if I don't just completely waste the heat by putting it in an unheated part
of the house) - in an electrically heated situation it's a wash. During air
conditioning season, if you have one, you lose not only the dollar value of
the waste heat but also pay to remove it with the air conditioner, although
at very high SEERs. So again the dollars wasted are almost insignificant. 

I'm not saying don't do it, the first ground source heat pump I ever saw was
on Charlie Wing's front deck (Brunswick, Maine, 1980, wrote "From the Ground
Up" and "From the Walls In"), and was made from the guts of a refrigerator.
But there may be other places you can apply your energy towards that would
give you a better return than cracking open the sides of the freezer, in my
opinion.

It IS rather baffling, though, why most fridges and freezers allow their
coils to "reheat" the box they're trying to cool because they're hidden
inside the sheet metal shell for protection; coils should be fully exposed
like they used to be.


Ross Elliott

  
Message: 1
Date: Sun, 5 Dec 2010 09:46:53 -0600
From: "Doug Kalmer" <sunart at netease.net>
To: <greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org>
Subject: [Greenbuilding] finding coils inside (new) chest freezer
Message-ID: <8CB654C64EFE4D7F8FC43D822984D733 at XYZPC>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Forget tearing into the walls, most chest freezers have the coils near the
outer sheetmetal in front and both sides, you would just make a mess of a
new freezer. Doug


Date: Fri, 3 Dec 2010 21:34:11 -0800
From: Reuben Deumling <9watts at gmail.com>
To: Greenbuilding <greenbuilding at lists.bioenergylists.org>,
RefrigeratorAlternatives at yahoogroups.com,
90PercentReduction at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [Greenbuilding] finding coils inside (new) chest freezer
walls?
Message-ID:
<AANLkTinG2dAyrUshz-pn=ZuCpN26C0a8SaKgihCdBuXe at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

This is a rather specific question, but since there are so many tinkerers on
these three lists I figured it wouldn't hurt to ask. We are going to be
getting a chest freezer--it goes against my better judgment to add a
kWh-sucking appliance to the list, but I didn't get a vote on this one. But
I digress. I've had good luck adding rigid foam insulation panels to the
exterior of our refrigerator--it makes do with about 125-150 kWh/yr--and I
would like to imagine doing something similar to the yet-to-be-purchased
chest freezer. The trouble is, I don't think any current chest freezers, and
I'm looking at ones that are rated to use <300 kWh/yr, have the coils
mounted externally.
Question 1: are any of you aware of a chest freezer I could buy today with
visible/external coils?
Question 2: on the assumption that the answer to question 1 is no, is it
reasonable to assume that (a) I might find the coils by feeling for warm
spots once it is plugged in and running?, and (b) what are the chances that
the coils will be confined to one of the four walls?
Question 3: If in fact I do find the coils and they are confined to one
wall, am I inviting all sorts of trouble if I try to gain access to them
(cut the external sheetmetal which I expect will be fused to the foam.....)
with the intent of gently adjusting things so that I could squeeze some
additional panel of insulation between the now visible coils and the
interior of the freezer?

Any and all suggestions are appreciated.

The freezer is likely to live in our basement. In the long run I expect I'll
try to carve out a dry space for it under our back porch to more fully take
advantage of the cooler outdoor temperatures.


Thanks everyone.

Reuben Deumling