Kill Your Fridge For A Month: Try Evaporative Cooling

Chelsea Green:

Project Time: Afternoon.
Cost: Inexpensive ($5-50, depending on materials used).
Energy Saved: High. Can be high if used to replace an electric refrigerator. Can also quickly be made during camping trips or blackouts when no other refrigeration is available.
Ease of Use: Medium. Food temperature will be uneven, and in summertime the box will be considerably warmer than a mechanical refrigerator, resulting in quicker spoilage.

Read the whole story: Chelsea Green

Comments

[SneathLane]

See, in the winter time you cut slabs of ice from the surface of frozen ponds, you store it surrounded by sawdust in a warehouse, and then you take it out in the summer and put it in a box with your food. It's called an ice-box. Works much better than this evaporation method, which only works in very low humidity climates.

[stevehamlin]

. . . and keep your fridge and freezer near full. Air dumps out with every opening of the door. Cold gets stored in "stuff" and it acts as thermal ballast.

Saw houses under construction in Germany -- small by our standards, but built to last for 100s of years. A very different ideal.

[moonbay]

did any of you read that article last week or so in HuffPo about insulating your fridge? Get a good fridge, insulate the outside (get creative and make it pretty), and save money on energy, while getting the cooling that you need to store your food safely. Makes sense to me. There was a mention of cork being a good insulator. I'm sure there're lots of good ideas out there.

[CrzyRussell]

What you'd save on energy you will loose in spoiled food. Trying this would probably increase your carbon foot print.

[prog]

Just an idea -- why haven't more houses, and fridges, integrated basic heat exchange technology?

I often wonder this when it's bloody freezing outside and my fridge is running.

[SpaceElevator]

Grey water heat recovery, and regenerative ventilation heat exchangers need to be designed into the home before construction. Most people don't understand the concept. They want something sexy like an enormously expensive Photo-voltaic array, that will generate a kilo-watt on a good day. Heat exchanger technology works all the time and churns out continuous savings. My sons and I have a small construction company. We intend to utilize these technologies when the company is expanded enough to build an entire house. (soon)

The Scandinavian countries already use these technologies. Hell, they take the waste heat from nuclear and coal fired power plants and use it to heat local towns. We in the US aren't that brave yet. We just send it into the atmosphere.

[KillTheMessenger]

Good point. But the US is waaaaay behind. Many homes don't even have double or triple pane glass and the wall and roof insulation is completely inadequate.

[SpaceElevator]

Will only get as cold as the ambient dewpoint. Works OK in a desert, but good luck finding water to run it. In the hot muggy northeast, I will use mechanical refrigeration, thank you.

[KillTheMessenger]

I was wondering about the best possible result, with a strong feeling in my kneecap that it would be rather mediocre. Do you have an idea of how well the best historic examples used to work? I think they still seem to use it in some places in India, but it seems to put a strain on the water supply even there.

[tjfdownsouth]

We did study this when I was in college and it works for air conditioning when you have 0 humidity but for the bulk of the US you would only end up with a temp slightly less than the ambient air. And hear in Louisiana I think you would actually end up hotter with more water in the system.

[howcome]

just go live in a hut

[KillTheMessenger]

Oh brother... just replace your old fridge with a new, more efficient one and you will have done yourself and the environment a favor. And quit pretending that just because something is low tech it's better, greener or has to even work. If it would work well, they wouldn't have had to invent the electric refrigerator to begin with!