Refrigerator Venting

[Oznog]

Put a plain 100% white raster on a TV, you can read by it in a fair sized room - bearing in mind it's not a point source like a light bulb.

That's a critically flawed way of measuring light. When the room is dark, the eyes adapt and can read in light thousands, even millions, of times fainter than "normal" light. This highly advantageous adaptation makes it impossible to gauge the intensity of light sources.

I can read by an LED flashlight at from quite a ways away, with it illuminating a pretty decent area, a few sq feet. Usually those should be around 4V @ 20mA, 10% efficient could be 8mW of light.

 

[bubzoid]

sanity

This one isn't so much the generation of alternate energy as energy management in the home (or institutions).

I've had running disagreements with the architectural community for a long time. They are extremely "building code" oriented and, Frank Lloyd Wright aside, don't seem too inclined to "experiment" much. The result is that we have houses being built today that don't include technology much beyond the 1920s.

In my kitchen is a refrigerator, nestled into a nook between the dishwasher and pantry. I don't know how it manages to work as well as it does since the heat exchanger is backed up to a blind wall in that nook (with cabinets that overhang the top of the fridge!).

I suppose, in the winter, it's okay since whatever heat load the fridge adds, just sums to the other heat sources in the house. But, in the summer, it doesn't seem like a very good solution.

Houses really need to be designed (in combination with refrigerators) such that the fridge expels its heat into a plenum that has a airflow gating system such that in winter the warm air is returned to the house while in summer that heat vents, via the plenum, to the outside.

Am I the only sane one on this issue or am I missing some major concept in physics?

I was just thibking of this so I typed in a search, "vent ref... heat". now I've joined this site. here's another one. gepthermal heating and cooling. what cools easy and it easy to pump? water or refridgerant used to change air temps above ground? or air itself? why not run air itself underground to be heated or cooled by the earth itself and pump the more desired temp' air up and into your home? surely a system I believe would work like this. it's my project for summer before the extreme heat hits. I'm in mesa, az. I'm gonna rig up a chase and vent under my fridge too. maybe a couple spare low voltage 12v dc computer fans. that should cost about,,, nuthin' to run. thanks for your input.. bob

 

[bubzoid]

ok, here's the expert idea. joking of course. you know how rhe heat from the fridge comes shooting right out from under the "front" of the fridge? come onnn. let me think,,, what other appliance gives off heat? a dryer. I know many other factors contributing, but... , blow the heat out the back to a vent outside. keep the fridge inside but not it's heat.. I'm doing this to mine today. I live in az. a/c's are exp.$ to run. why work against it? have fun bob