omg

Okay... back to fridges again ffs.

There is a off grid fridge made by a pretty famous company for bus/mobile fridges, that someone was just showing off.

They pull out the 'drawer' of it and say what I keep saying about this issue...

A drawer/chest fridge is better because it doesn't let the cold air fall out of it when you open it.

Except... it's not.

It's a slide out tray that has no sides, so that when you slide the front out, all the cold air instantly falls out of it... faster even than a normal fridge, because it's open on opposite sides...

And the guy is blissfully unaware of what he is talking about as he is like, "It's great, you don't lose the cold air when you open it!"

YES, you fucking do.

A slide out drawer style can be better than a front opening box, if it's an enclosed drawer that actually holds the cold air inside it when you open it. If it doesn't, it's no different.

It's still not as good as a top opening chest style though, because it will still replace the cold air around the outside of the drawer, in the insulated box, with warm air that has to be cooled again when it closes.

I don't get why this is hard to grasp.

Let's see if I can help this some...

You can carry a bucket of cold air and pour it on someone in warm weather/environment. As long as you don't tip that bucket, you don't need a lid on it, it will keep the air that is inside it for the most part, there. If the bucket isn't insulated, it will warm the air

up the longer you take and if wind were to blow across the top of it, it could push some of the cooler air out, but for the most part, the bucket will still have cold air in it when you tip it over.

Alternatively, you can 'carry' hot air in cold temps the same way, by holding a bucket upside down. You'd have to 'dump' it under someone for them to feel it, but it will work.

Because cold air is more dense than warm air.

That means that cold air is heavier than warm air. Cold air falls and hot air rises.

You can see this by watching steam from a kettle. As it comes out and gets beyond the range of the pressure of it, it still keeps rising to the

ceiling.

If you want to trap cold air in a container, you put the opening on the top of it.

Every single time you open a 'conventional' style, front opening fridge (or freezer), you have to cool the new, warmer air that replaces it almost instantly on opening it. I don't mean if you stand there with the door open... By the time you have a fridge door all the way open

the cold air is pretty much all on the floor of the room you are in.
How many times do you open your fridge in a day? How many times to you have to cool down all the air in it?

With a chest style, as in the only opening is on the top, you only ever have to cool that air down once. Unless you let it warm up over time of course. But the point is, the only energy you are using to keep it cool, is to replace the amount that 'seeps' out through the sides,

which you can reduce by increasing insulation, and the energy to cool the actual stuff you put in it. You are never cooling down that whole box of air again, you are just keeping it cool.

It goes beyond just energy use and the cost of that energy as well. In a normal fridge, every time you open the door and let all that cold air out, your food starts to warm up. The longer the door is open, the warmer that food gets. When you close the door, not only do you

have to cool all the air down again, but you have to re-cool the food that has warmed up some. That constant warming and cooling cycle on food, reduces its usable lifespan.

So, you save energy and money in the actual cooling process AND your food lasts longer, if you have a chest style fridge.

Yes, there is a downside in that you have to reach down into a box to get your stuff and if you don't have it organized well, it will be more of a pain in the ass to get some stuff.

It doesn't equal out.

A chest style is still better.

Just comparing energy use in normal modern style upright vs chest style freezers, for example, shows a difference of $4.00 per month for a chest style compared to $14.00 per month for an upright one.

That difference would be greater the more times you open it every day.

Change the design even more, but using a better insulated box and moving the hot elements of the cooling unit away from the box you are trying to cool will increase that even more.

And if all that wasn't enough reasons, there is one final one, that is especially important for applications like off-grid or bus/van living.

A chest style one will keep your food cool for a couple of days if there is no power. An upright one, starts your food spoiling the first time you open it, as its all now surrounded by room temperature air and you have no way to cool it back down. When you close the door, the

air inside will warm the food up as the food cools the air down. Each time you open the door, you start the process over with room temperature air again and warmer food.

A properly designed and built chest fridge will use less than 10% of the energy an upright one of the same size will and you will have longer lasting, better quality food.

So ends today's "Refrigeration: Stop being morons" rant.

Oh wait... not quite lol

Why does this matter, beyond the food quality issue? Would using 10% of the energy really mean that much?

An older, non-energy efficient fridge, if electricity is .10.kWh, costs about $16.50/month. An 'Energy star' but still conventional upright fridge could use as little as

$2.90/month. A chest style, designed right, will use less than $0.29/month.

If you exclude space and water heating/cooling and a washer/dryer, use energy efficient lights, your fridge (conventional upright) is the biggest consumer of energy left.

When you're talking about living off-grid, whether in a tiny home, a bus or whatever, every bit of energy you use matters. Why would you waste so much of it just for something just slightly more convenient that doesn't do as good of a job?