alt Hacker NewsChest Fridge (2009)
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It's a cool idea, and might be great for a secondary fridge. For a primary fridge though, it's so much more convenient to have direct access to everything through a vertical door. I like energy efficiency, but I'm willing to pay 300kWh a year (around $40 here) for that convenience, let alone the space efficiency.
This reminds me of the Technology Connections fridge rant video. Similar arguments all around, the dumping effect of cold out of a vertical fridge is pretty crazy to watch with a thermal camera.
Ohhh the links at the bottom of this guys site are wild and good reading.
Please note I am disputing his science on the efficacy of a vertical fridge.
Its possible to design internal structures such that its easier to use as a Fridge and freezer with some loss of space to avoid having to reach down into it. It would waste space and some efficiency however, the more complicated it becomes with assisted lifting and such the worse the gap would become. But the problem is often space, a lot of kitchens do not have 2x the floor area to be putting in chests making them good for secondary storage somewhere else but not a primary kitchen appliance.
There is no doubt its better thermally just because cold air falls out the front of a normal fridge/freezer and huge amounts of energy are wasted everytime you open the door. A chest design looses considerably less of its cooled air but its also a lot more awkward to use and ends up less floor space efficient.
Because I have more vertical space in my kitchen than I got horizontal one.
I have a bad back and bending over hurts. Statistically it will also start to hurt you someday.
Even if we ignore the pain, there is no way to organize food in a chest freezer effectively. To reach items on the bottom one must remove all the food that sits above it. This wastes time and effort that could better be spent on other things. Meaning the opportunity cost is too high, even if it saves me money on electricity.
Why?
a: space.
A standup fridge freezer is floor space efficient.
How much rent is the chest freezer using per year :)
Made up numbers 10k for 1000sqft
10 per sq ft
So say $40 a year in rent. Still not too bad I guess
Modern refrigerators are designed for browsing. A chest fridge could save a person a lot of calories over time
Probably completely offset by having a home large enough to have a chest fridge.
Drawers would solve this in a vertical fridge.
Just have to make it either easy to buy or easy to mod and emphasize energy savings and lots of people would be interested
Edit: looks like a few chest freezers have a "fridge" setting, which sounds like the easiest way to do this for those interested (maybe)
It's more about freezers than fridges. Less frequent access and ton more work to get the temps back. I never thought about it but it was such an a-ha moment for me when I recently learned about it that I'm genuinely flabbergasted why it's not more popular.
What’s the possibility of turning such a device 45 degrees (or even 90)? Would it ruin anything? Because then you could stack two and it wouldn’t be so bad.
Reminds me of Fly Away Home with the round fridge that would lift out of the counter. True story: "The refrigerator is round, rising from under the granite countertop with the touch of the button.
“The pneumatic fridge works with air compression,” she says. “You step on the button and it pops up and the racks spin like a lazy Susan. Cold air is heavy so it stays cold.”" https://www.thestar.com/life/home-and-garden/paula-lishman-a...