Man Retrofits Freezer to Make an Ultra-Efficient Fridge

I've been off the grid this week in Northern California and the one thing I would really want is a bigger freezer. Yes - we have power and a fridge, but it's not big enough to hold everything for the week, and best of all - town is 11 miles away so we've had to make several trips for ice just to keep everything cool and the road is a bit dicey. I would kill to have a nice big freezer for ice, meat, and even some ice cream.

"An off-grid experimenter in Australia, Tom Chalko, has retrofitted a chest freezer to create a fridge that uses only 100 watt-hours (0.1 kWh) per day! Tom points out that vertical door refrigerators are inherently inefficient. As soon as you open a vertical fridge door the cold air escapes, simply because it is heavier than the warmer air in the room. When you open a chest freezer, the cool air stays inside, just because it’s heavy. Any leak or wear in a vertical door seal causes significant loss of efficiency."

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