July 30, 2005

• Perhaps you meant: refrigerator
• Keep your sossidges cool in a refridgerator.
• Blimey, I was expecting it to be some complex Heath-Robinson contraption but he's basically just done it with a thermostat. Superb. CFC free too I hope :)
• Fridges are for pussies... real men use a stasis field.
• Stasis fields are for pussies. Real men salt and dry their meat. Mmmmmmmmm. Pemmican.
• I thought this was the most efficient refrigerator ... no electricity! (ok, ok, it's not as cold, but it is cool).
• The fact that it's such a simple, elegant idea makes this incredibly cool, one which hopefully would make more people say "Hey! I can do that" and proceed to do exactly that.
• Homebrewers have been doing this for a while to build kegerators. The thermostat controller only costs around 50$, and the cost of a used chest freezer wouldn't be too much more. (not affiliated with either site, BTW)
• I've been reading MetaEfficient for a bit now and they find some really neat stuff. The fridge thing is so simple but so smart.
• Sadly I couldn't fit one into my kitchen, it is far too small. Only space for an upright, but I suppose it could go in the tiled, bathroom-come-laundry area. Ironic that people in flats/apts who would most benefit from the moneysaving device would have difficulty managing the space aspect.
• Monk, it will keep your mlik from going sour, too.
• As useful as this is for all of us to learn, he could have even just taken a regular refrigerator and laid it on its back. It would have had the same effect.
• I'm really confused. How is this refrigerator more efficient? Granted, chest freezers are better than upright ones. But aren't all refrigerators temperature-activated? And even if they weren't, it would still be a matter of setting the temperature control to the right level, so that it doesn't do any more work than it needs to.
• I agree. Surely it's possible to buy a chest refrigerator already. If not, I see a new marketable product.
• I remember seeing one of those "house of the future" shows (I think it was on HGTV) that featured a sort of modern "root cellar" idea. They had a trap door in the floor that opened to reveal a small refrigerator for storing vegetables. It was basically a well-insulated tub with a small compressor for cooling. Supposedly very efficient. bernockle, flipping a conventional fridge on its back wouldn't be very efficient. The heat-exchange coils would wind up underneath the food compartment. heat rises.... (Come to think of it, the earliest refrigerators were converted ice boxes and had their compressors and exchange coils on top where they belong).
• I'd imagine chest refrigerators are rare, if they exist at all. People generally care more for convenience than for energy efficiency. It's easier to use a fridge if all your food is arranged vertically, rather than rooting around in the bottom of a chest. Think about dealing with half-empty milk cartons, smaller items that would rattle to the bottom, produce that bruises easily, etc. Yes, you could design ways to deal with that, but an upright's still going to be easier to access. Also, tipping an upright fridge on its back may cause it to leak coolant. A lot of them can't even be shipped horizontally.
• I'd imagine chest refrigerators are rare, if they exist at all ?! Just about every house I've ever been in has a chest refridgerator. Most keep theirs' in their garage.
• Most of the houses in my neighborhood don't even have a garage.
• What Knickerbocker said. They're about as rare as a toaster around here.
• in the pdf the guy claims that no one makes chest type refriderators which is why he had to rig up the thermostat for it.
• Maybe I should've said that just about every garage I've been in has one.
• Some of you are mixing up refri(d)gerators and freezers. Chest freezers are the ones that look like coffins, only they're pretty much always white. They're also the ones in which various killers have frozen their victims, only to be hunted down several years after the fact. What this guy appears to have done is to turn a stand alone freezer into a refigerator. I'm not sure it's really convenient, since most of us would only have room for it in garage, storage shed or basement, but, otherwise, it might be pretty cool. (Heh.)
• Indeed I was! *turns red*
• I think the thermostat is added to make the freezer turn off at a higher temperature than it would normally like to? I think this is what makes it a fridge rather than a freezer.
• Homebrew shops make a controller that will raise chest freezer temps to refrigerator levels (it's a common hoembrewer's mod to make a tap system/lagering chamber out of a chest freezer). Supposed to be pretty easy - digital controller connects to a thermocouple, overrides the regular controller. Voila!
• After the discussion on tea the other day, I've been seriously considering the possibility of modifying a kettle for precise temperature control, i.e. one that would boil water, wait for it to cool to the preset tea-making temperature, then beep to tell me and maintain that temperature.