A friend of mine who was on a bomber crew over Japan in 1944/45, told us how after that he sold major appliances for Gimbels in Philly.
He said that a Kelvinator model, the first one to have side by side doors for freezer and fridge, sold for 399 dollars in 1945. Isn't that interesting. You can buy a refridgerator for the same price now, I think, and a side by side for probably not much more.
An ad was accidentally printed once in the Philly newspaper that said the price was $3.99, and a potential customer came in insisting on buying it at that price, but he wouln't sell it to him.
I'm a single parent with a 15 year old son (mom is deceased). My girlfriend was disgusted with my old fridge and she went out and purchased an Estate brand over and under for around $329 if I recall correctly. Plenty of room in the fridge for us two jabronies but the freezer is a bit small. Doesn't matter, I have a small square freezer in the basement that someone gave me when they upgraded to a larger model.
That was in incredible amount of money back then. Wages were probably a buck an hour.
When we got married in 1966, we bought a TV, 19" B & W portable for $170. A small room AC the next year was $200 or so. We also lived pretty well on about $120 a week.
Legally, an ad is an offer for you the customer to make an offer. Mistakes are not binding. Some stores honor mistakes just because it pisses off too many customers not to and because of the hassel.
My grandparents had a gas refrigerator that had no electricity going to it. It made ice and kept milk cold.
Same with computers. In 1989, my graphic design department bought me a "top of the line" 386 PC with an Apple Laserwriter printer. The bill was over $10,000. Mind boggling.
was about 3¢ in 1945. That was much more expensive that what most regions are now factoring inflation. Efficiency of refrigerators is much better now, of course.
BTW, I don't know if fridges are made in Mexico, or somewhere off shore, or if prices have gone down because of that, but even before prices that would have happened, they still weren't much higher than they are now. Nowhere near 400 adjustedd for inflation.
I used to have a second refrigerator in the basement, a 12 cubic foot with small freezer. it was not frost free at all. It was probably made in the
1960's. I replaced it with a frost free 18 cu ft model that takes less than half the energy for a larger space. My electric bill dropped $10 a month. Sounds more efficient to me.
I'm saving energy with the larger frost free over the older, smaller, standard model.
It may be true for your specimens (although "my electric bill dropped" isn't conclusive--my bill drops all the time by far more than that), but a frost-free necessarily uses more, all other things being equal.
And no fair comparing a piece of rotating machinery that has been running for 40 years. Do you think motor oil is as good as new after that long?
The electric bill is amazingly steady during most months compared to the same time previous year. Air conditioning is the exception depending, on weather. Most of my lights are on times so use is hte same during Dec, Jan Feb, after adjusting for daylight it will be the same in April, May, June. It was conclusive, IMO
Just look at the nameplate on both units. I forget the exact numbers, but the new newer frost free uses about 50% of the older manual defrost. Something line 4.3A versus 7.8A., going from memory. Compressors are more efficient, insulation is better. Facts are facts.
I agree that a frost free may use a bit more, but I'm betting it is the tiniest bit more. There is also a cost of defrosting. The unit has to be turned off, heated up, ice removed, then re-chilled from ambient. There is a cost to do that once or twice a year. People often use hot water or hair dryers to defrost and that takes considerable energy.
Consider just the ice making process in a frost-free refrigerator.
First, you pay to pump the heat of fusion to make the ice to start with, with some heat of vaporization from the liquid.
Second, you pay for a fan motor to circulate air in the frost-free design, rather than using convection as in the old way.
Third, you pump the heat of fusion *and* vaporization, as a substantial amount of the made ice is sublimated by the circulating air, ice turning into vapor, as your ice cubes shrink.
Fourth, you pay for the heat of fusion and vaporization, to condense the sublimated water vapor onto the evaporator coils.
Fifth, you pay the heat of fusion to melt the frost off the evaporator, the liquid frost water going into a pan at the bottom of the unit.
Sixth, you pay to evaporate this frost water out of the pan into the house air.
Seventh, you pay yet again to condense this vapor out of the house air via your air conditioner, and finally get this waste out of the house.
So in making ice in your frost-free, quite a lot goes into wasted ice making several energy-hogging thermodynamic round trips from liquid and/or solid to vapor.
Try turning off your frost-free ice maker, and removing all exposed ice from the freezer. You'll be amazed how much lower your duty cycle is. Ice making and ice waste makes up a large percentage of frost-free energy costs, and doesn't quite make it into the federal formulas used to make the imaginary yellow energy-cost stickers.
I think you may be on to something. I'm exhausted of all my energy just reading all the steps involved.
My first question is about the ice making frost free or not, we still make and use ice. That part of the equation remains the same, no? It is the frosting of the walls of the freezer that is the problem. Getting rid of it does involve some energy use, of course, but we have to consider all the factors. Is a standard unit with a half inch of ice buildup operating as efficiently as a clean unit? Does a two inch buildup of frost affect the operation? Theory aside, they are real life issues in every day households that do not use a frost free model.
You listed a very long process and voyage of water in either solid or vapor form. I don't have any idea where to get the numbers that go with it, but you've not convinced my to give up on having ice and having frost free. There is loss in having a frost buildup too and lost energy in defrosting manually. We really need the numbers of a full year of operation under the same circumstances of door openings, ice use, and total energy used in all forms to keep the units operating well.
I'm at home now and looked at the actual current draw of my 18 cut ft frost free and it is 4.75A. Not bad. My 22 cu. ft. frost free with ice maker takes 6.5A at full load. Both of these are less than the old 12 cu. ft that I had. My 18 cu. ft. freezer, not a frost free, has a load of 2.0 A. What really needs to be done is record actual run times to get total use.
The point is not that anyone should be giving it up.
It's just that so-called frost-free refrigerators are not efficient, and never will be, because they use inherently wasteful techniques to produce convenience. A prime example is how they evaporate the water into the room instead having a drain connection or having you empty a collection bottle. Or how they blow air over an open bin of ice, wasting it through sublimation.
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