I plan to buy a house next spring, so I'll almost certainly need a new refrigerator. There's a problem: they don't make the fridge I want, and never have. I can't figure out why.
Refrigerators today are quite different than antique ones, using a different coolant because of the ozone layer, better insulation, the use of rare earth magnets in the motors, and other improvements.
But they're still incredibly wasteful.
The fridge I want has two vents outside, much like dryer vents but insulated. There is an electronic outside thermometer, one in the refrigerator, and one inside the freezer.
When the temperature outside is above seventy Fahrenheit, the heat taken from the fridge is vented outside, so the air conditioner doesn't have to work harder to cool the hot air refrigerators let out inside the house.
Under seventy the air is vented into, rather than outside, the house. If the heat is on, it doesn't work as hard.
But most of all is winter. It's ludicrous that we pump the heat from our freezers with a lot of energy expenditure, while freezing air is right outside that could come in the intake hose and freeze and cool your food. At freezing, this fridge doesn't need the compressor at all and compressors take a lot of energy to operate.
I don't know why nobody is selling those things.
November 07, 2015