OT - recommend a 70/30 fridge freezer? - long

Budget built in fridge/freezers are around £300. Non-budget ones can be £1,500+ Apart from the tasteful plating of key components with unobtainium how are these products 5 times better than the budget ones? More to the point, can the components cost 5 times as much?

O.K. - I think the break between budget and upmarket is probably the provision of a second cooling circuit and independant adjustable thermostats for fridge and freezer. However if you can build the whole thing for £300 retail then you should be able to add this for another £200 max. Where is the other £1,000 spent?

Cheers

Dave R

Reply to
David WE Roberts
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On Wednesday, October 24, 2012 8:42:37 AM UTC+1, David WE Roberts wrote: =20

Have you seen the price of unobtainium? :-) At a guess, the extra is a combination of higher setup costs per unit becau= se of smaller production runs, higher costs for better quality components a= nd finishes, a little bit extra because the manufacturer and/or retailer ma= y have them in stock for slightly longer, plus a good dollop of extra profi= t. It's the same with a lot of things - just a bit more performance and/or = reliability can cost a lot extra, but may be worth it if the cost of not ge= tting the performance when you need it is high.

Reply to
docholliday93

Buy a Liebherr. They are cheaper than the Miele equivalents and are all made by Liebherr anyway. Avoid frost-free freezers - far less reliable. I'd recommend separates if you can find room.

Reply to
Mark

In message , Mark writes

Hmm.. we have just had some flack from our tenants. *Frost free* freezer compartment iced up so fridge doesn't work.

Is this an issue over drainage or ...?

Reply to
Tim Lamb

Yes, we have one of those, which replaced the 35 year old one following a compressor demise a couple of months ago. I'll count myself lucky if it lasts five years - all new FF's (at least on this side of the Pond) seem to be engineered to die as quickly as possible.

TBH I've not found the side-by-side, double-door construction to be too much of a pain yet (and it is nice that someone can be peering in the fridge without a huge door blocking the way past for everyone else).

I've not even tried the ice maker yet; it's waiting until I re-do the basement plumbing in the spring and can get a convenient line run over to beneath where the fridge lives.

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules Richardson

Could also be failure to switch on heating, or indeed failure of heating element(s) themselves.

Chris

Reply to
Chris J Dixon

Agent is dealing and sending an electrician along today.....

Reply to
Tim Lamb

One of those was in a house I bought. I was initially impressed but ended u= p hating it. One attraction was the ice maker but the previous owners hadn'= t plumbed it in and I didn't do it either. I found out why they didn't take= it with them: it was heavy and needed three of us to move it. We had to ta= ke the doors off to get it through the kitchen door. Taking the doors off w= asn't trivial because of connection to the ice maker.

It was like a reverse tardis, massive outside and tiny inside. The walls se= emed four times as thick as on a European model. The compressor seemed to r= un all day and night. It was noisy. The freezer had no trays to retain cold= air, only shelves so each time you opened the door, all the cold air was r= eplaced with warm air. I get the impression space efficiency and energy eff= iciency aren't so important in the American market as they are in Europe.

I was pleased to get rid of it. The Bosch that replaced it had the same int= ernal volume but took up much less space. The compressor was very quite and= ran much less often.

Reply to
metric_trade

Chris J Dixon wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

Sometimes a severe frosting up (such as due to the door being left open) can lead to more ice being formed than one defrost cycle can cope with - the situation escalates and eventually it can stop the fan. The heating cyle is programmed to do a normal cycle (plus a bit). Heavy frosting overwhelmes it.

Reply to
DerbyBorn

I was rather amazed when ours was delivered that two blokes just carried it in, with the assistance of harnesses and straps slung under the machine.

Yeah, ours actually has less space in it than the 35 year old one that it replaced, despite being a few inches taller. So far it doesn't seem to be any more energy efficient, either, although it's hard to be certain. I suppose the old one probably used nasty fluids which did a better job but that are now banned...

Indeed - and it's going to be interesting to see if a large turkey or whatnot will even fit in there.

Space certainly isn't an issue; most homes around here are quite large. Energy efficiency is one of those hot topics here these days, but I believe there was some scandal with energy star ratings a few years ago and the system's a bit of a joke, so it's hard to know how good anything really is (particulalry compared to global models)

cheers

Jules

Reply to
Jules Richardson

We have a Liebherr. I agree they perhaps cost a little more than some others but IMHO worth it. Well made, quiet and looks the part. The other contender (at the time) was Siemens

Reply to
Jo

Fortunately it's not compulsory to buy what you don't want. We have one and I don't regret our purchase in the slightest. A big freezer only encourages hoarding and the ice maker is used on an almost daily basis.

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

By that logic you would have no freezer at all. SWMBO grows veg and then freezes it into portions for winter use.

Ice is only needed in hot weather. Our actual Beko model is discontinued but appears to have been replaced by this:

which is what we'd get if we were in the market today. It also has the twist/serve ice device, perfectly adequate.

Reply to
Tim Streater

One thing that seems a bit different between the bog-standard and "premium" brands is the sturdiness of the freezer drawers and similar.

We have a Liebherr tall fridge and freezer side-by-side combo and the plastic drawers in there seem really sturdy compared to some of the flimsy examples that we looked at before buying.

Regards, Simon.

Reply to
Simon Stroud

I use plastic trays for quite a lot of food in my fridge, so one can reach in and take out a set of items easily, sliding the tray off the shelf it was on. IIRC some of the trays were sold as seed trays or something like that in a garden centre.

Reply to
Jeremy Nicoll - news posts

Apart from performance such as A+ rating, the visible features I'd watch out for if buying a modern fridge/freezer:

  • Freezer drawers: the ability to see what's in them without opening them i.e. clear or translucent

  • Light: LED not tungsten i.e. more reliable and smaller

  • Fridge cool air vents: at each shelf for even cooling rather than at just one point

  • Adjustability of shelving. Some fridges are more flexible than others.

  • Robust fittings, trays, drawers. Lots of fridges/freezers have broken shelves.

  • Easy open door. I had a fridge where the handle broke. Some units have a hinge arrangement that pushes the doorframe out as you pull the handle.

  • Easy to clean: the top should be flat (some aren't). Check the hinges (a bit nerdy of me I know). Some units allow you to remove the magnetic strips for cleaning.
Reply to
metric_trade

I have a friend with a new fridge with LED lights. An absolutely ghastly blue/white light that makes everything inside look disgusting. I would definitely *avoid* LED lights for fridges unless the colour balance was right.

Besides, how often do you change fridge bulbs? It's not exactly a frequent or onerous task.

Tim

Reply to
Tim+

But, but, but, think of all that carbon to be saved?

:o)

Reply to
Huge

You make a fair point. Colour is a big factor in my choice of home lighting= .=20

Yes, it's not often but I'd like it to be less often. I currently have a fr= idge with a failed bulb.

Yes, it's not difficult to change a bulb. But I can't replace the bulb beca= use I can't get the part.

Another feature I liked was that they'd arranged LEDs at multiple points. S= o each shelf had illumination from at least two sides. That's better than a= single point which gets obscured by food. My current bulb holder reduces u= sable shelf space. It's only about the size of a butter pack but you lose t= he whole vertical extent too plus it makes the shelf effectively narrower. = It's not a show stopper but when a new technology comes along that's an ord= er of magnitude more compact and reliable, it appeals to me - perhaps more = my nerdy side than my pragmatic side.

Reply to
metric_trade

The light in our old Bosch fridge was annoying though.

It was by the opening side of the door, and the whole unit moved in and out - which switch it on and off. The bukb was a small halogen one with two pins, but it was for ever falling out. Eventually the cover came off and got broken, so the bulb would get lost when it fell out, so it spent the last couple of years with no light

Reply to
chris French

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