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Old 08-07-2015, 06:09 PM   #17 (permalink)
Longsnowsm
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Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: US
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Stovie, I like your thinking here... Root cellar is your friend for preserving things longer term such as root veggies, some fruits, cabbages etc. Many of the things we have in a fridge really could probably be eliminated. Today for convenience sake I still have a fridge, but I decided to get rid of the electricity sucking monster I had and I bought a chest freezer and put a Johnson controls temperature control on it. If you look on YouTube for the Keg-er-ator for converting a fridge for keeping beer cold you will see how it works.

It dropped my power consumption by a large amount and has worked out OK for us. It is more difficult to organize things and when you want something your having to move stuff around, but the energy savings is well worth it. Our goal is to move completely to renewables for our home power and we keep plugging away at it one thing at a time either by replacing things with the most energy efficient electronics possible or asking ourselves if we really need it at all. In the case of the fridge if you dehydrate, smoke, and keep things cool in a basement or root cellar you can probably find you don't really need a fridge... For canning alternatives instead of using fuel you can do fermentation for preservation. I do my kraut and my pickles this way, and you can do a lot of things this way. No cooking, heating, or killing your food, and it is better for you in the process... So lots of ways to do things that we have just forgotten today!
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