EcoRenovator - View Single Post - Passive Fridge, cooling your fridge in the winter.

Ryland · 03-08-10, 12:25 PM

A few people have done things like put their fridge so the coils on the back side are next to a cold wall, or a small opening in the wall to allow them to cool better in the winter, some have even gone as far as to have ducting and a flap that opens with a fan that comes on to bring cold air from the outside in to your fridge in the winter, all of that is well and good but they all require a decent sized hole in the wall and some weird modifications to the fridge, or for the outer coils of the fridge to be cooler then they are designed to operate at thus causing the refrigerant to stay liquid rather then evaporate like it needs to to function like it's designed.
This is where a heat pipe should work really well, at least for those of us who are heating their houses for 6 months out of the year, a good run down of the design is found on the Sun Frost web site, the makers of some impressive fridges, my parents have one of the very early Sun Frost fridges that they bought in 1988, still working, still in use.
Here is a page on their web site on the topic.
Now it sounds like it would work best if your fridge didn't have a freezer, that is pretty much what I have as it's a single door fridge with a small freezer inside, in the top, we keep it full of ice and forget about using it, if I replace it (the Kill-a-watt says it's cheaper to run then most new fridge we can buy, but it's old and is not going to last forever) I plan to replace it with a fridge without a freezer as well, it's next to the north wall of the outside of my house so it seems ideal, not having the fridge run for 6 months at a time seems like it would be nice as well.
I did write to Sunfrost to ask about a price to make a heat pipe for me, but for the most part its a cooper pipe with refrigerant in it so if I knew the specs I could have someone locally make it.

03-08-10, 12:25 PM	#1
Ryland Master EcoRenovator Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: Western Wisconsin. Posts: 913 Thanks: 127 Thanked 82 Times in 71 Posts	Passive Fridge, cooling your fridge in the winter. A few people have done things like put their fridge so the coils on the back side are next to a cold wall, or a small opening in the wall to allow them to cool better in the winter, some have even gone as far as to have ducting and a flap that opens with a fan that comes on to bring cold air from the outside in to your fridge in the winter, all of that is well and good but they all require a decent sized hole in the wall and some weird modifications to the fridge, or for the outer coils of the fridge to be cooler then they are designed to operate at thus causing the refrigerant to stay liquid rather then evaporate like it needs to to function like it's designed. This is where a heat pipe should work really well, at least for those of us who are heating their houses for 6 months out of the year, a good run down of the design is found on the Sun Frost web site, the makers of some impressive fridges, my parents have one of the very early Sun Frost fridges that they bought in 1988, still working, still in use. Here is a page on their web site on the topic. Now it sounds like it would work best if your fridge didn't have a freezer, that is pretty much what I have as it's a single door fridge with a small freezer inside, in the top, we keep it full of ice and forget about using it, if I replace it (the Kill-a-watt says it's cheaper to run then most new fridge we can buy, but it's old and is not going to last forever) I plan to replace it with a fridge without a freezer as well, it's next to the north wall of the outside of my house so it seems ideal, not having the fridge run for 6 months at a time seems like it would be nice as well. I did write to Sunfrost to ask about a price to make a heat pipe for me, but for the most part its a cooper pipe with refrigerant in it so if I knew the specs I could have someone locally make it.