#34 I agree with the bad design from engineering point-of-view (the heat outback is totally wasted) and so some kind of heatpump would be more efficient. Also I recently came across this ‘simple’ twin fan idea http://www.trademe.co.nz/Computers/Servers/Server-components/auction-234536403.htm that apparently can be fitted to any ‘box’

Better to do a little maintenance than have a major appliance fail early, which’ll cost far more than a hundred bucks!

Cool idea about the “chest fridge.” My 5’3″ wife might not like it, but it appeals to the tweak geek in me!

you can use the food ones to individually freeze things like meatballs and strawberries [then bag them after they are frozen] so they don’t stick together.

i buy large containers of things i use often but i live alone. so a quart of chicken broth – i use 1 cup now, pour the rest off into an ice cube tray and when it’s frozen i bag the cubes. next time i need chicken broth i get as many cubes as i need and melt them.

also tomato sauce, nacho cheese, leftover soup, little bits of leftover veggies that aren’t enough for a meal, rice [seasoned or unseasoned.] when frozen into cubes, like things go together in a bag.

by like things i mean anything that might be ingredients for chicken soup or ingredients for beef stew would go with each other: meat juice, veggies, barley, rice – when i have enough i throw the cubes in the crock pot and simmer. a little freezerburn never made a difference to me in a leftovers stew!

also, being diabetic i don’t go through juice fast [too much sugar] but i need to keep it around for hypoglycemic emergencies. so i freeze it up as ice cubes and use one to flavor my seltzer or iced tea once in a while or suck on one if my blood sugar is too low.

always seal your food or juice ice cubes up as soon as you can after they are solid to avoid freezerburn, flavor contamination or sublimation of the liquid. i forgot a tray of juice cubes once for a couple of weeks and ended up with a sticky goo in the tray because most of the water sublimated out, leaving the sugar behind

Thanks!!!!

Another tip:
When you take bread out of the freezer, put it in the fridge.
It will cool the rest of the fridge while defrosting.

Agreed!

thinking radically… :)

Thanks for the timely tip. It’s 100 degrees here in Richmond today….conservation of any kind certainly helps the electric bill!

1.) Keeping a silver dollar in the fridge, near the fan. Silver has antimicrobial properties. This can help extend the shelflife of food 2-3x.

2.) Use an ethylene gas-absorbing disc. Ethylene gas is released by foods as they decay, and it promotes decay. These discs absorb the gas, and they literally will make food last for weeks longer by naturally slowing down the rot. We use this brand: http://www.4theegg.com/purchase.html; it seems to be the most cost effective, and with refills, the most environmentally sensitive.

Eeeeek, calling Lean Cuisine “healthy” makes me cringe!

i read somewhere that rinsing out bleach bottles after you use them, then filling them w/ water would store it well, and the tiny bit of residual bleach would preserve the water

i think i’ll do both now- the soda bottles for drinking, and the washed out bleach ones in reserve for cleaning and bathing would make me feel better than having only the bleach bottles.

and i love your idea of putting them in the fridge when the power’s out. what a fantastic idea.

“A freezer, whether it’s a deep freezer or a freezer housed in the same appliance as a refrigerator, functions best when it’s really full, as the cold items help keep other items cold and maintain the low temperature.”

While it’s true that the relatively high average specific heat of a full freezer will keep the freezer cold longer than if it were full of air, it also takes more energy to cool down. Let’s say a freezer leaks 1000 J/hr (energy lost to the surrounding air) and is 90% efficient (this is ridiculous, frankly, but the numbers are convenient). To replace the 1000 J lost, the freezer has to do 1111 J of work. The freezer kicks on at 0 °C and kicks off at -2 °C.

If the freezer is full of air, let’s say it contains a kg. The specific heat of air is ~1000 J/kg*°C at 0°C, so the air inside will gain 1 degree for every 1000 J lost (1°/hour). Every two hours, it will kick on and do 2222 J of work, to bring the temperature back down to -2. The average work is 1111 J/hr.

Let’s say the freezer is completely full of ice. .77 m^3 of ice is 705 kg, and the specific heat of ice is 2050 J/kg*°C. To gain two degrees takes 2,890,500 J, or 2890.5 hrs (this example is more extreme than I expected, but no matter). Once it’s gained those two degrees, the freezer will kick back on. The heat capacity hasn’t changed much, so it’s going to have to put in the same energy that was lost, and the freezer is only 90% efficient. It will take 3,211,667 J to cool the ice back down. The average energy use is 1111 J/hr.

Ta da! The contents of the freezer don’t matter much. The extra energy the freezer has to expend to cool off ice makes up for the increased cycle time. Additionally, adding room temperature water to the freezer will require additional work to cool the water to freezing and effect a state change (heat of fusion). It’s just not a very good idea. The one thing you gain is a ready source of ice.