fraser_john
Go Pies
My beer fridge sits in the laundry off the kitchen, it faces west and has southerly and westerly facing window, so it gets pretty warm. I noticed the fridge running a lot and decided to run a bit of an experiment to see if I could get the fridge running cheaper. I bought a fridgemate and wired it all up, I then attached a power meter so I could collect the power usage over a two week period for each stage of the experiment. Fridge set at 4c:
1) Run fridge as standard baseline
2) add 3/4" styrofoam board to left/right/top/bottom of fridge, so extra insulation on four sides
3) add $10 desk fan to exterior coils
4) add $10 desk fan to interior coils
Results are graphed in the following images.
Some notes about the blow out on "outside fan". Turns out that adding the fan made the coolant a boat load more effective at chilling the freezer compartment. Kind of expected. But, what I did not expect is that all the little cracks & gaps in the fridge, including where I had the taps coming through the front door allowed a lot of moisture in. The added efficiency on the coolant resulted in a MASSIVE load of ice developing in the freezer compartment. Meaning the compressor had to run overtime to try and keep the temp where I had it set.
Some notes about the blow out on "inside fan". After the outside fan blow out notes above, I defrosted the fridge, drilled a hole for the fridgemate probe so that it went through the fridge wall instead of between the seal and the door and sealed it up with silicone, used silicone to seal up where the taps came through the door. I had the interior fan sitting on the base of the fridge blowing air up to the freezer compartment. Turned out this was not good, all it did was mix up the air in the main fridge compartment, so it went from 5c when the compressor turned on and jumped up to 6c. Took ages to cool down again.
Final changes for Inside Fan #2. Added 3/4" foam to inside of fridge door, insulated the tap shanks inside the fridge. Siliconed up all the little cracks and screw holes inside fridge. Then I mounted the fan at the rear of the fridge, as close to the freezer compartment as possible, sucking cool air down rather than blowing it up. It now turns on at 5c and takes about 5 minutes running to get it back to below 4c where it turns off. It runs stuff all now.
So after all this, probably at a total cost of around $30, my fridge is looking like its going to cost me half the amount to run annually than it did before. This will extend the life of the fridge as well!
1) Run fridge as standard baseline
2) add 3/4" styrofoam board to left/right/top/bottom of fridge, so extra insulation on four sides
3) add $10 desk fan to exterior coils
4) add $10 desk fan to interior coils
Results are graphed in the following images.
Some notes about the blow out on "outside fan". Turns out that adding the fan made the coolant a boat load more effective at chilling the freezer compartment. Kind of expected. But, what I did not expect is that all the little cracks & gaps in the fridge, including where I had the taps coming through the front door allowed a lot of moisture in. The added efficiency on the coolant resulted in a MASSIVE load of ice developing in the freezer compartment. Meaning the compressor had to run overtime to try and keep the temp where I had it set.
Some notes about the blow out on "inside fan". After the outside fan blow out notes above, I defrosted the fridge, drilled a hole for the fridgemate probe so that it went through the fridge wall instead of between the seal and the door and sealed it up with silicone, used silicone to seal up where the taps came through the door. I had the interior fan sitting on the base of the fridge blowing air up to the freezer compartment. Turned out this was not good, all it did was mix up the air in the main fridge compartment, so it went from 5c when the compressor turned on and jumped up to 6c. Took ages to cool down again.
Final changes for Inside Fan #2. Added 3/4" foam to inside of fridge door, insulated the tap shanks inside the fridge. Siliconed up all the little cracks and screw holes inside fridge. Then I mounted the fan at the rear of the fridge, as close to the freezer compartment as possible, sucking cool air down rather than blowing it up. It now turns on at 5c and takes about 5 minutes running to get it back to below 4c where it turns off. It runs stuff all now.
So after all this, probably at a total cost of around $30, my fridge is looking like its going to cost me half the amount to run annually than it did before. This will extend the life of the fridge as well!
