I have a standard full-size refrigerator (GE brand, freezer on top). I do not use the freezer at all, just the main cooling compartment. Is there any way to disconnect the freezer because it just wastes the electricity?
Some refrigerators have a switch you can flip to turn it off. Check the controls, or check your owner's manual.
You seriously don't use the freezer _at_all_, not even to make ice? Wow.
Many refrigerators have only one evaporator in the freezer compartment and use a fan to blow cooled air into the slightly warmer refrigerator compartment. If you don't have anything to freeze in the freezer you won't be absorbing much heat from that compartment and therefore the energy consumed in cooling it will be small.
Isn't the solution to fill it with jugs of water? (easier and cheaper to keep a solid at freezing temperature than air) Also you can move the frozen jugs into the 'fridge part if there's a power failure.
The major energy waste would be from heat or moisture getting in. If you want a quick and dirty way to save some bucks, duct tape around the door seal (to help keep humid air out) and wrap the freezer section in fiberglass, or bubble wrap. Sounds goofy, right?
As another poster suggested, the evaporator is in the freezer. Not much you can do about that.
The point here is to *save* the energy and not come up with ways to use *wasted* energy. Go back and read the question
He did give you a way to save energy. If you can not turn off the freezer, which I doubt you can, the next best thing is to keep it full. Greg
That would save energy. Cooling an empty space takes more energy that keeping a solid mass cold. There is less transfer of heat energy from leaking air. There is no way to disconnect the freezer compartment as thee is only a single cooling system and single coils. Therefore, you work with what you have. You could keep the freezer at the highest temperature setting for a minimal energy reduction.
Read up on thermodynamics and heat transfer before you are critical of others. Buddy's suggestion is sound engineering. Ed snipped-for-privacy@snet.net
I hear your words, Edwin, but please riddle me this:
If his refrigerator is anything like my GE top freezer model, the chilled air blows into the freezer compartment at the top of the back and exits at the bottom of the front.
The "air leakage" you reference, if it exists to any significant degree, which I doubt, will only occur if there's a poorly fitting door gasket, or if some part of the freezing compartment is cracked or missing.
So, just how is the presence of a some jugs of ice in the freezer going to reduce that kind of leakage Edwin? The air will still be blowing around in there won't it?
The only way your explanation might apply is when the OP opened the freezer door. In that case a larger volume of cold air would "fall out" of an empty freezer than from a a "full" one and be replaced by room temperature air which would have to have its heat removed.
But, since the premise of this thread is that the OP said he wasn't going to use his freezer, it's highly unlikely that he'd be opening the door, 'eh?
So, I don't consider Buddy's suggestion as "sound engineering" from the standpoint of saving running energy, but I do like his idea about those jugs of ice providing a temporary emergency backup.
You should consider the initial one time energy "waste" from cooling and removing the latent heat of fusion from those jugs of water. That would be a lot more than initially cooling the few grams of air in an empty freezer compartment, but it'd be insignificant over the long haul anyway.
There is no way to disconnect the freezer compartment as thee
Since you felt obligated to respond to the OP in a sarcastic fashion Edwin, how about clueing us in on yout CV and how it qualifies *you* to gas off like such an "expert" on the instant subject?
Jeff
Umm...he gave you an idea, and since you cant disconnect the freezer since THATS your evap coil, and there are none in the actual refrigerated section, you are having a one time greater load to remove the heat from the water and freeze it, and since a frozen block of water is much easier to maintain at freezing or below temps, then you actually will reduce the load on the unit. Also, since everytime you open the door to the unit, the air in the lower section WILL be passed over the evap section up top, you are further reducing the load on the unit by having in essence, a source of ice that will actually help remove the heat..altho, heat is heat and there is no such thing as cold. Either way, you introduce X number of BTUs to the unit, X+Y has to be removed. The waster here is that you have a refrigerator you dont really need. You need a small unit thats got the freezer section thats barely large enough for an ice tray...
Nope. The heat load is due to air leaks, conduction, and radiation, none of which have any dependence on what is inside, air vs something else.
If you open the door (why would you in this example?) then you dump the chilled air for warmer room air, and in this case a filled space is slightly less lossy. But you would be better off filling it with blocks of styrene foam.
There is a lot of superstition when it comes to refrigerators.
Making ice in a frost-free fridge has *way* more cost than most people realize. First you pay to freeze it, then you pay again to sublimate much of it, you pay again to condense and freeze the submlimated vapor onto the evaporator coils, and you pay still again to thaw it off ("defrost") the evaporator, then you pay to evaporate the defrost effluent into the kitchen (because a drain would be too much for most consumers to hook up), and you finally pay a final time to condense the resulting humidity out of the house with your air conditioning. The same water literally goes through *eight* phase changes, seven of the eight being utterly wasteful.
Jeff Wisnia wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@comcast.com:
Thermal mass. Check it out!
One thing to keep in mind is ALL cooling air comes from the freezer section and is cycled. One example you can relate to is it takes less energy to cool a small home than cool a larger home. Filling the freezer section with Styrofoam makes it a smaller space to cool.
Anyone with a marginal refrigerator may have noticed the unit works better when the freezer is full. Like after shopping at Sam's Club or Costco (-:
I worked for seven years for one of the premier manufacturers of heating and cooling equipment. Much of this in the engineering department under Leroy Strauch Ed.
Hi,
No model#, style posted.....but on a frost free freezer on top refrigerator the cold is made in the freezer section and then the cold air is blown by a fan into the fresh food section. You can probably turn down the freezer a bit but to totally do away with it or shut it down completely would mean the refrigerator would not work any more either.
If you need no freezer space at all, maybe sell this refrigerator and put that money towards an all-fridge.
jeff. Appliance Repair Aid
I should clarify. With an open space you will get more air change when the door is open, even the refrigerator door as they are connected. Having a solid mass, and yes foam insulation, would lessen than. Thermal mass will also help stabilize temperature fluctuation, but that is usually not very critical in the typical home refrigerator.
No matter what you use, the air vents between the chambers must not be blocked.
I don't know if this would work or not but no one else has suggested it (perhaps because it is silly?) but I would enlarge the openings between the freezer and the refrigerator.
As I understand it, the thermostat is in the refrigerator, and the compressor works to keep the refrigerator at the right temperature. The compressor is in the freezer, and the freezer temperature is set by regulating the air flow to the refrigerator; a lot of air flow is high freezer temp, little airflow is low air flow. If you removed the wall completely, the whole unit would be at whatever you set the refrigerator at.
Comments?
Messing with the thermodynamic characteristics of a combination freezer / refrigerator could have interesting results.
If you think that making the duct between the freezer and refrigerator larger will increase the air flow you are assuming that the air flow is limited by the static pressure of the duct. More likely, the air flow is limited by the circulating fan to a specified CFM. You could increase the circulating fan speed or size but then you'd have to worry about the duct pressure (again). No telling what removing the wall completely might do!
With that clarification, I'll withdraw my carping objection to the validity of your original explanation. Your use of the term "leaking air" had me believing you were referring just to air leaks from the freezer compartment to the outside air, most likely through a poorly fitting freezer door gasket on a freezer door we all expected to never be opened. (Never? well almost never.)
Your expanding the definition to also include as "air leaks" the opening of the refrigerator door (and any leaks around its door gasket) makes your explanation understandable and valid, because the refrigerator's air space is certainly connected to the freezer's air space.
As I found out several years ago when SWMBO managed to pack so much stuff in the freezer that she blocked off at least 80% of the air exit vent slots at the bottom front of the freezer compartment. Stuff started spoiling "too quickly" in the refrigerator, and it took a measurement with our refrigerator thermometer and a bit of thought to figure out what the problem was and how to correct it.
Peace,
Jeff
Ouch!
Quite a price to pay for a little convenience, isn't it?
Add to that the fact that since our family doesn't use all that many ice cubes these days, by the time we need a few they've mostly shrunk (that sublimation you mentioned) and stuck together like two dogs without a bucket of water to throw at them.
Methinks I'll gain us some room in our freezer by pulling out the icemaker and replacing it with two or three "olde fahioned" trays.
Thanks,
Jeff
HomeOwnersHub website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.