"aemeijers" wrote in message
stuff snipped
If this fancy fridge (that came with the house) dies, it is getting
replaced with a big-box entry level special. Not a fan of side-by-sides
anyway. I'd rather have a freezer that a frozen pizza fits in without
bending.
I hear you. We bought a minimum sized fridge because we're waiting to sell
(arf, arf) and I have to use karate on the frozen pizza. Over the edge of
the table and boom!
I also agree - spend the money on CU FT rather than doodads. I had to
disconnect the ice-maker one on the old unit for two reasons. It was alway
clogging and it would always wake up my wife in the middle of the night when
it dropped a load of ice. I couldn't hear a thing but I got poked awake
anyway. )-: The only thing I might spring for is a door open alarm.
With a small freezer full of folded pizzas, it's easy for the door to not
close tightly enough to seal. That's a very hard condition to detect unless
you have switch contacts of some sort right at the opening edge of the door.
I've been able to monitor door openings and closings with an X-10 "EagleEye"
RF PIR sensor. It sends a signal when it detects lights on or off but only
transmits when the box is open (the refrigerator acts Faraday cage when
closed so no RF escapes it).
Why am I doing this? It's going to enable me to calculate some basic cost
figures about how much juice is used as related to # of door openings a day.
My preliminary results show the opening/closing cycles *really* affect
electrical usage. Unfortunately, the current system doesn't track the
length of time the door is open for each day. I'll have to hardwire a
sensor. Fortunately, those plugs for water lines to ice-makers make great
access ports for sensors!
This way, I can figure out if I need to mount clear plastic "bellows" to the
door (with a reach in-port) to save money on electricity if the market
collapses again.
Dan Lanciani got me thinking in a recent thread about refrigerators
"freezing up" if you're away for a few days. That seemed to imply that the
thermostat never reached its base point when there are a substantial number
of openings and closings per day. Another thing I've noticed is that door
openings are especially "costly" (relatively speaking) in very humid
weather. That makes sense because any air pulled into the unit when opening
a door has to be both cooled and dehumidified.
What I would like to do is to figure out where I should move the thermostat
to when we're away for a few days to keep the fridge from freezing up
without being too high to keep food safe. Next time we go somewhere I will
have a recording thermometer (actually RatShack RS232 capable meter with
thermocouple probe attached to a PC) to watch what happens to the unit's
temperature while we're away. Right now, all I have is an RF dual
compartment sensor RF thermometer with settable (but very anemic sounding)
alarms that doesn't record
All this pizza talk has made me hungry. Time to unfold a DiGornio
Thin'n'Crappy (TM) Pepperoni Pizza (after seeing somewhere that the
preservatives in pepperoni have been implicated in cancer).
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/16361276/ns/today-food/
Is *nothing* safe to eat anymore?
If you take a single piece of pepperoni from a pizza, is it a
pepperonectomy? Once a single piece is removed, does it become a
pepperonus? If it hits the floor does it become a pepperonite? If it's on
a Japanese pizza is it pepperonium? If these words upset you, are you a
pepperonophobic?
--
Bobby G.