Oct 25, 2006 11:34 pm
Re: Propane refrigerators
yeah, see, since I'm already generating the alt energy, I figgured it's more economical to just incorporate the fridge into the plan. Not only that, but I've recently had several major failures to the propane units I HAD. "Free fridge, anyone? All you gotta do is pick the friggers UP!" I've not had any problem with our electrical units "snapping", or making much noise at all. I live in an eight sided house, 34' diameter, all open floor. In fact, day before yesterday, we FINALLY got a nice break from the late season heat--my house is completely open as I type, at 11:23 at night (of course, the Somfy motorized screens are all down...!). Man, is it NICE to hear the breeze, and the windchime down on the beach!! As I said, our house is completely open floor plan; the kitchen is in one quadrant of the eight sides, there is a knee-high concrete wall that divides the house roughly in two, one side of the wall (with a glass shelving unit above it), is the couch, facing the pull-down tv screen (100 whopping inches diag. in a 1000 sq.' house! not bad, but actually, there is NO ROOM or walls to put a conventional tv against!). The other side of the wall/shelving unit (right behind the couch), is the bed, headboard towards the wall unit. The unit is simply 8" bamboo, with 1/2" tempered glass for the shelves. In the kitchen, I have a standard Kenmore 19 cu/' fridge/freezer. Even when the ice maker is cycling, it's never kept me up, but I know all folks sleep differently. When I said "EnergyStar", I meant just any ole' conventional unit from BestBuy or Circuit City or Sears. They've gotten so efficient, it really beats the cost of propane (or, as I call it, "propain-in-the-arse"
What island you on? We in Exumas, Bahamas, also about 12 miles from the nearest village/mailboat drop-off, from where our propane comes. However, I am in the process of installing a fuel bunker (8000 gal. diesel, 4000 gal. gasoline, and 1000 gal. propane), but even then, I won't use it for fridges. Some things propane does well (water heating, cooking), other things I leave to electricity (fridges, pumping, lighting), and still more I leave to "mr. stinky" (filling dive tanks, running the A/C, and, till I reasearch further a new device to improve the efficiency of the watermaker, squeezing salt water into fresh).
jcc