Quote:
Originally Posted by Daox
I wouldn't necessarily say it heats the house. I'd say that it removes the heat from the fridge that was taken from the house in the first place. There of course will be some waste heat from inefficiency of the system.
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Yes, it not worth making it a more complicated idea than it has to be. A refrigerator is a heat pump. There is never perfect efficiency so whenever you are running the compressor energy is being wasted in the conversion process. It comes out as heat. This is separate from the heat generated that is just returned back to the room the refrigerator sits in.
The inefficency heat is a wasteful type of heat. But then most heating systems are to greater or lesser extent. What one needs to figure out is if the inefficiency and cost of running the refrigerator is worse than the heating system your house has. (Solar heat uses free energy even if it might be an inefficient system.) If it is more costly then you should insulate it and try to keep it from running as much as possible and use your home heating system to entirely heat the house. If it's less costly than the heating system then just let it run as much as it wants and don't insulate it. This would be based on a heating system that is already in and paid for and not a based on a system you are planning to put in and that you borrow money to pay for.
In both cases the biggest return would be to vent the heat outside with a duct damper when it's already too hot in the house.