Quote:
Originally Posted by Patrick
My current fridge has the coil under it towards the rear by the compressor. A small fan draws air through a vent in the toe kick, blows it over the coil, then exhausts it back out the front. I'm sure this is not optimum as the cooler intake air is mixing with the warm exhaust air. There must be a better way to do this.
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My Mom's refrigerator is also like that. When I stand in front of it, I can feel the warm breeze on my toes. I seems like the whole fridge is bathed in rising warm air. I imagine that when the door is open, cold air drops out while warm air from underneath climbs inside. No wonder her fridge is on more often than off.
So how about adding a duct to lead the warm air far away from the fridge (or maybe behind/above it)? That way the temperature of the whole area may drop by 1-2 degrees.
The design with condensers (=hottest part) placed underneath is not efficient. The "old fashioned" ice boxes with large coils on the back wall were much better. Granted, they used more energy, but this was because of poor insulation. The large surface area of the coils was much more efficient at transfering heat, and the placement allowed the natural convection of airflow, so no energy hogging fan was needed.
My superefficient refrigerator uses only 0.7kWh/day, and it has rear placed coils. Even when it's been on for 15 minutes those coils are barely warm. I wonder if having the freezer below the fridge helps or hurts efficiency?