We took the mini plunge

What is the fridge make and model? I never want to pass up the chance to steal someone else's research. (Sometimes stealing someone else's work is the best engineering. Just ask Microsoft.)

 

Congrats on the positive moves, you have inspired me to try harder too.
I can borrow one of those kill-a-watt things from work, when I get back from my holidays I'll borrow it and check my fridge out and an old freezer I have in the laundry. My fridge is only 3 years old, Samsung with the freezer on the bottom and water dispenser with a 4.5 litre container in the door. It has trays for ice but you just twist a knob to drop the ice into a container before refilling at the tap, simple and easy. The freezer in the laundry is maybe as old as your old fridge so it could be a power hungry little mite.

Clothes drying in a dryer is dreadful. I have a retractable clothes line under a veranda giving me all weather drying. An idea I saw in UK was a clothes hanging rack attached to the ceiling with pulleys in front of the fire place. Hang clothes on the rack and hoist them to the ceiling where it's warm and they dry quick. Drying clothes in the air is a much more efficient way to cut green House emissions over a dryer than a PVA.

Older CRT TVs are another heavy consumer of power too, even when they are off, they often have high standby consumption.

 

I'm hoping to change out the fridge this year. The current one is 15 years old, runs great, but is using about 1200-1400 kWh/yr (averaging lower winter, higher summer). I'm looking for max capacity for the space as well as the efficiency, and it needs to be stainless to match in the kitchen so this one is going to sting a bit in the wallet.

I'll resell the old one for maybe $200, but that still won't put much dent in the price of a new one. Unless electricity price goes through the roof it won't break even for at least 10 years. Still, it is impressive how much efficiency has improved on these appliances compared to when this one was built.

I thought the bottom freezer models were supposed to be more efficient? Cold air sinks so there is some logic in making use of lower spaces for the coldest zones.

My old refrigerator that I had for ~16 years before I bought this house was a top freezer model and that was its undoing. The insulation between the freezer and refrigerator sections was insufficient, so after a few years condensate from the freezer defrost cycle would refreeze in a drain pan in the top of the fridge, then spill down into the fridge below. I had to get it levelled just so, and then balance both settings just right every season to prevent the formation of the ice dam. It had also lost some refrigerant over the years and began icing the coils periodically. (Still, I got $100 from a used appliance dealer for it before I moved.)

 

My current refrigerator is a GE and was an energystar when I bought it. Don't remember what it was rated for. But it's less than 10 years old so I'm not replacing it. It does have the freezer on the bottom, but I find I can get in and out of the upper refrigerator (the most used part) a lot faster now that it's eye level than when I had to stoop and search. Also no ice maker or fancy door dispenser stuff. I'm limited by size. I have an old kitchen with cabinets over and on both sides of the refrigerator. As it I had to sand the bottom of them down to get it in. I tiled the floor over the existing so that raised it. So the refrigerator can't be to tall, too wide or too deep.

Congrats. I've got a gas dryer but I'm getting a drying rack for over the tub and installing a retractable line as soon as it warms up a bit. I couldn't find the one I had bought so am breaking down and buying another. If the other turns up...I'll just have two.

 

Bottom freezer is less efficient because the temperature difference between the hot compressor/motor and the freezer is greater so there is more heat transfer than if the much warmer fridge compartment was adjacent the compressor/motor. Also when the freezer is on top the heat transfer into the freeze bottom from the fridge is less than from the air near the floor of your kitchen and that heat transfer reduces the load on the system to cool the refrigerator section.

 

Well, I can't argue with the temperature delta being greater in that location, but with the freezer on top the delta with surrounding air up there is also greater...and hot air from behind the fridge rises too. So I'm not sure what the net of the relative compressor-to-freezer location would be if all else was equal.

In general I've found it counterproductive to design heat transfer systems counter to the natural convection (especially with PC's). In a relatively open vessel (not pipe or ducting) it is difficult to uniformly force cold air up and hot air down. It can be done but there is an energy penalty associated with having a fan/blower pushing that air around. My current refrigerator is a side-by-side and there is a substantial delta T from top to bottom on the refrigerator side--enough that I won't put things that can't stand a freeze on the bottom shelf and I don't store more readily spoiled items on the top shelf. This coupled with my long term experience with a top freezer suggests that a bottom freezer design could be more efficient.

The following link Refrigerators & Freezers - Energy Choices at the Home says that bottom freezers use 16% less energy than side-by-sides, while top freezers use 13% less than side-by-sides. However, when I look through the Energy Star lists ENERGY STAR for the same maker/same capacities the relationship of top and bottom is reversed with the top freezer being about 10% more efficient.

It would be interesting to do a real world test on the two types to determine if the rating test matches the relative performance.

 

It is my belief (note belief) that a well built, well designed fridge with a freezer on the bottom is more efficient. The best units are those with the compressors on the top. Why put a heat source under the fridge. I once had a fridge where the condenser coils were under the fridge! How dumb was that?

As for driers,,,,Kill the drier. A drier burns ~4-5kw. Even a gas drier is a waste of energy. Why pay for energy to do what nature will do just fine. You can always disconnect the element and use the dry cycle to fluff you clothes if you want.

We air dry 90% of our stuff in the wet PNW year round. (We do use the drier when we get behind during a long rainy siege) We air dry our stuff in the frozen north of northern Canada. Things freeze dry just fine. It is usually so dry outside at -20 that the water sublimates very quickly.



Icarus

PS: TRIPP, good on ya for getting the fridge squared away. Too many people don't have a clue what their stuff draws,, a kill-a-watt is a cheap investment if you are serious about saving energy.

 

Very nice. We replaced a 20 y/o Montgomery Ward side by side with a scratch and dent LG french door/bottom freezer model a while back (inside Ice, no water or anything on the door). Amazing what a difference it makes. Also amazing how infrequently it runs compared to the old one

Line drying is amazing here in AZ. In the summer, with 110F and ~5% humidity clothes dry in about an hour. Its really sad more people don't take advantage of it here.

Rob

 

For what it is worth,,, on top vs bottom freezers:

Bottom-Freezer Refrigerator Buying Guide: Powered by ConsumerGuide and HowStuffWorks

Bottom Freezer Refrigerator

Refrigerator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The jury is divided,, but the majority think that bottom freezer is less efficient.

Icarus

 

A typical Aussie back yard.

Everyone has a hills hoist in their back yard, well nearly everyone.
I dropped a huge tree branch on mine last year but I hadn't used it in years after installing the line under the veranda.

 

Ours is plugged into a power bar that stays off most of the time. I haven't tried the killawatt thingie, but I hope I've got the right idea.

In summer, a load of towels dries faster outside on the line than it does in the dryer. The ladies of the house are reluctant to dry everything outside, so we have to make a few concessions to vanity.

We bought something called an all-fridge. Just like the name says, it's all fridge, without a freezer either top or bottom. (We have a small chest freezer downstairs. Maybe it's not as energy efficient, but it's the only way to store a side of organic beef.) It's designed to be paired with a matching stand up freezer, but we didn't buy that part. It's kinda big, but fits nicely where the combination electric and wood burning stove used to be. Yeah, we had a wood burning stove in the kitchen. With a water jacket hooked up to a hot water tank in the closet: cook dinner, wash the dishes, have a bath. Improvements are pretty easy when the 'before' was made in 1939. You should have seen the boiler! The former coal bin made a lovely 'bicycle barn' until we renovated the basement.

 

Thanks for the update. Mine is using 128 kW-hr/month. I might lower that if I finally stop confusing the refrigerator with a TV. (e.g. I stop opening the dang thing every hour looking to see what I can devour.)

 

Hey Tripp,

Your monthly use is enviable. Congrats.
Way before PV I suggest looking into solar heating

 

Solar water heat first, followed by space heat, followed a distant third,, after ALL conservation. PV solar,

Icarus

 

Solar water heat would be attractive if using electricity for water heating presently...but if you are using gas it doesn't really impact your electrical load. Therefore one could size and do PV without considering it, if the water heating source is gas. (Now in terms of return, the solar water heat might still pay out more quickly, but that is separate from PV sizing concerns.) If a later solar water heat conversion was planned I guess one would need to do the layout with that in mind.

The irritating thing to me about natural gas is paying $25/month to be hooked up to the grid. Yes, I realize that there is expense in maintaining it and, no, I don't really mind paying my share of that. It's just painful to realize I would be billed that amount even if I was using solar for water heating (since I have a gas furnace.) I've lived in locations where I had electric water heat and I was just paying that gas service charge every month until winter hit.