Would using an old refrigerator that takes blocks of Ice as the refrigerant be better for any reason?

Energy is still used. That ice has to come from somewhere and then it has to be delivered.

@Shae I don’t mean from an environmental standpoint, more from a lower the electric bill standpoint.

You’d have an ice bill and an ice delivery bill. Not to mention rotting food if it was really hot out. The ice would melt and everyone in town would want some, ohh.

@faye I don’t think soooo…. This was the way it worked for a loooong time. As long as the ice buying and delivery was much cheaper, whats the big deal?

They don’t have freezers.

If it was good and easy, why is no one doing it? Even camping I wished for a better way. Once the ice melts, that beer is just not the same!

The ice chest is very inefficient and I suspect the cost of the ice would be higher than the cost of the electricity, plus you have the water to dispose of every day.

@faye I think people switched to electric refrigeration b/c electricity wasn’t something they were using to price gouge us back then, but I’m not sure about that.

I have one, an antique, with a beautiful oak exterior. It holds old books at the present time,but I would not use it for food.

@YARNLADY so it’s just an ice chest pretty much?

Listen to @YARNLADY. And no it wasn’t just that it was new, it was because it was wonderful!

An energy star refrigerator from 2001 and forward will cost you around $51 a year in electricity.

Do you think you would use less than $51 a year in ice?

@Ltryptophan

Yes, it’s just an ice chest with a locking door and no freezer.

I used to hear horror stories about children hiding in them for play, never realizing that they’ve latched themselves in, only to suffocate. That’s why modern units don’t have locking latches. If you get one, make sure to remove the latch.

@Shae HTFSIK??

@Ltryptophan WTFIYP?

@Shae ??

What are you saying?

@faye :-P

@Shae Ice would run at lease $1 per block, and you would probably need at least one a day, probably more that’s a minimum of $30 a month.
@Ltryptophan Yes, here is what they looked like.

I have one of those oak ones too. It’s very pretty, but it’s lined with zinc or something, and I can see that if
I put ice in it now it would leak right through the liner, which
is old, bend, corroded.
EnergyStar rules.

HTFSIK – how the F should i know?
WTFIYP – what the F is your point?

right?

I suppose there’s a point about freon that could be made.

If you live in cold country, during the winter months you can just put your food in an ice chest and leave it outside the back door. This would solve your electricity dilemma for half the year.

I have one of the best esky, cooler, whatever you want to call it, there is. Thick walls and lid, excellent insulation but the ice still melts in less than 24 hours when it is hot. Then the food floats in the water and you must worry about water tight containers because of cross contamination. I use 2 coolers when camping, one for meats and the other for veg, less chance of cross contamination that way. I am all for energy conservation but I am not going to give up my refrigerator and freezer, no way!!! Besides the cost would be higher buying ice constantly and it takes energy to make the ice, so I don’t see any saving and a lot more aggro!

Unless you are cutting the ice from a pond in winter and storing it in an ice house, you are still using fuel input to freeze the ice. The old ice boxes were difficult to regulate temperature with and could cause food spoilage.

They look great.I see them in antique stores occasionally and wouldn’t mind having one.To use as a fridge??No thanks,they don’t seem very efficient.

One of my earliest memories is of the ice man delivering a block of ice to my paternal grandmother’s. She had an oak ice box with a big drawer on the bottom where the ice went.

The guy always gave me a few slivers to sip on. He delivered the ice with large tongs. Delivery was not free. Ice was taken out of frozen lakes in the winter with special saws. Then the blocks were stored (in sawdust) in ice houses with very thick walls.

I owned an old camp (read five buildings, 11 bdrms and 12 acres of roof) in Lake Placid for several decades. It had an ice room with really thick walls. We used it for laundry and woodworking. We found the saw under the house and hung it on a wall.

I recently learned that they used to cut blocks of ice from places that were cold enough to freeze water and then ship it all over the place for refrigeration.

Unless you are cutting the ice from the backyard, you will likely expend much more energy moving the blocks than you would by simply using electricity to run a refrigerator. Due to the population size, I don’t think it is physically possible to source enough ice to serve the entire country. There could be dire environmental effects resulting from trying to do this as you would be relocating tons of water in the process, not to mention potential contamination issues. The alternative would be to make ice…

Ice storage is still practiced in some places to provide air conditioning to buildings. This is typically only done if electricity rates are tiered to favor electricity consumption during non-peak hours or perhaps if there is a large difference between night and day ambient air temperatures that you want to take advantage of. You draw electricity from the grid during non-peak hours to make your ice thereby allowing you to not draw from the grid during peak hours. For the electricity company, this redistributes load and can help them avoid having to increase the capacity of power production of their plants so they offer a price incentive that the building with ice storage can take advantage of.

One good thing about using water as a refrigerant is that it is not toxic or a greenhouse gas. Our most efficient refrigerants happen to be ozone depleting CFCs, and R22 is being phased out of production. HVAC equipment use refrigerants in closed loops, meaning they are 100% contained…unless there is a leak. And if you knew how unromantic maintaining HVAC is, you’d know that most people spend their money on more aesthetic maintenance that people can see and let their HVAC systems rot. Hence the phase out.

Water is often used as a refrigerant in large HVAC systems. In places where potable water is scarce, however, this can be a problem. Also, water can be corrosive.

With HVAC, water-cooled systems are more efficient than air-cooled systems that use refrigerants for obvious reasons, but also more complex and require more equipment and are therefore only used suitable for larger applications. A water cooled refrigerator I’m sure is possible, but would take up much more space than a typical condo or home owner would be willing to provide and it would not be as aesthetically pleasing I’m sure. Simply replacing the refrigerant with water I am sure would not work as water has a tendency to hold heat not release it, and it is much easier to get a refrigerant to change phases than water I think.

Going back to your question, it is easier to control temperature accurately when you are working with a refrigerant than with a block of ice that melts and needs to be replaced. I am not sure if the ice approach is more efficient but impractical or if refrigerants are indeed more efficient.

If it were a better overall solution, we would still be using it, wouldn’t we? So even if the electric bill is a little more, it’s obviously probably worth it.

Back when I was poor my fridge went out. I couldn’t afford to buy a new one. For a month I only used the small freezer section and bought bags of ice. At least it kept the milk and butter cold. But, in the end, it was a lot more expensive than the electricity it used. I had to buy bags every other day.
I finally appealed to my church, and two ladies came through. The were partners, and had an old fridge hanging out in the garage.

Per your question…even though it’s old and you aren’t here, but lets throw this out to anyone who may stumble upon it…where on earth would you find big blocks of ice that you could buy? They are so NOT in demand I think it would be horribly expensive.

Hey, @Dutchess_III I stop in from time to time. Our local ice houses sell the blocks of ice for sno balls (think super man to clark kent sno cones), we large table top machines that shave them into fine snow.

If you live in a metropolis I’m sure there are bars that are serviced by specialty ice makers. Do a search.

Hi ya @Ltryptophan!
Would a large block of ice work better in a cooler than bagged ice, I wonder?

Hmm, I think definitely yes. It has only a set outer surface, whereas a thousand cubes are all losing drawing heat individually.

By George! I think you’ve hit on something! Ice has been the scourge of our camping career.

It was your idea! Good thinking.

Now, where to find block ice!