The hidden costs of refrigeration

Every once in a while I have a nerd attack. Well, it's pretty much ongoing. For example, I recently cleaned the coils on my 25-year-old fridge and the whole episode got me thinking. The door gaskets are lame. The fridge runs too much. It shudders like a sinking tanker.

To assess the possible need for a new fridge, I ran the unit through three tests, awarding points from 1 (pathetic) to10 (perky). The total was not good.

1. Difficulty level of pulling a five-dollar bill out of the closed door: Score 0 (it fell out)
2. Brittleness of gaskets: Score 4 (not all of them are cracked)
3. Quietness of operation: Score 2 (can drown out party conversation)

Total score: 6 out of a possible 30

And here's the downside - that isn't our only prehistoric fridge. The vintage upright freezer in the basement and the veteran beer fridge didn't score any better. Plus the old freezer spews cold air every time we open the door (which is why upright freezers are 25% less efficient than chest freezers).

Also, the door on the beer fridge has to be hip-checked to close; otherwise it admits warm air, which defrosts the wee freezer, which in turn weeps all over the beer and drains out onto the floor. If it weren't for the soggy socks I could ignore it indefinitely.

Frozen Assets

So, I've been researching the benefits of a buying a new fridge. Here are the high points, which made my low points seem even lower.

1. The cost of running one fridge averages between 11 and 15 percent of your electricity bill (more if it's an old beater). If you keep an extra fridge and a freezer, you're looking at tripling that (to between 33 and 45 percent of your bill). With our 3 refrigeration units, I'm guessing we're spending at least $100 a month just keeping stuff cold.
2. New fridges (models released in 2001 or later) are so energy-efficient that they run on about a third to one half of the power the old fridges use.
3. For every 1000 kilowatt hours your refrigeration devices use per year (and the old ones use at least a thousand), they're responsible for the production of 852 pounds of CO2, along with particulates (smog) and oxides (acid rain). All in the service of keeping your groceries nicely chilled. Makes modern life seem a bit skewed, doesn't it?
4. Side-by-side refrigerator/freezers are the least efficient design available. Refrigerators with the freezer on the bottom use about 16 percent less energy than side-by-side models. Units with the freezer on top use about 13 percent less energy than side-by-side fridges.
5. A manual defrost fridge or freezer actually uses about half the energy of an automatic defrosting model, but the catch is that it must be defrosted regularly. What are the odds of being a competent defroster when I don't clean out my e-mail more than once a decade.
6. A fridge that is 10 degrees colder than necessary uses about 25 percent more energy. Put a thermometer in your fridge to make sure the temperature is ideal (1.7 to 3.3 degrees Celsius, or between 35 and 38 degrees Fahrenheit). If you want cold beer, get it the old fashioned way - by filling the trunk of your car with ice and packing it with two-fours.

Counter Deductive

I'm suspicious that the cost of operating my two fridges and upright freezer is costing me more in one year than the expense of replacing all three units with one decent high-efficiency refrigerator. But I have to know for sure before I start haunting the aisles of appliance stores.

So I've ordered a Kill A Watt Meter for 59.95 from Energy Alternatives. The Kill A Watt Meter is a miniature electronic version of the hydro company's meter. You plug it into the wall and then plug your aging fridge into it. The meter measures the number of kilowatt hours the fridge uses in a week. I'll multiply that by 52 (weeks), then by my cost per kWh (our bill says the cost is 4.7 cents, but by the time you add the delivery charges, non-baseline charges and debt retirement charges, it's actually 11 cents per kWh).

While you're waiting for the exciting results of my nerdy experiment, try the 5-dollar bill test in your fridge door. If your fridge is in the same shape as mine, we could actually make a profit just by upgrading.