Too Good

A drawback to our efficient little fridge: it's very difficult to thaw anything in it. I've yet to do it successfully, except when I happened to be running the defrost on the freezer compartment at the same time. I think the defrost works by simply shutting down the compressor and letting the frost thaw. The phase change draws heat from the rest of the refrigerator and thus keeps the food cool. When all the frost has melted, the temperature in the refrigerator begins to rise, and a sensor switches the compressor on again.

So I guess the trick is to take the turkey out of the deep freeze, put all the food from the freezer compartment into the new space in the deep freeze, wedge the turkey into the freezer compartment, hit the defrost button, and pay attention, because as soon as the thaw is finished, the compressor will kick back in and freeze that bird all over again. Of course, if there's room for the bird in the fridge part, you're okay, and the sound of the compressor kicking in is just a handy signal that the thaw is complete.

I'll have to try that.

And then I'll have to cook the thing. Never cooked a turkey in my life.

Learn to do by doing, they say...

I Got Out Alive

"Mu-umm??"

Did you miss me?

It wasn't that bad, really. I would have been back sooner, but the job just didn't seem complete until I'd washed all the newly liberated storage containers.

The Refrigerator Saga, Part 2: What makes a star a star?

(Part 1 is here.)

The first part of this post was drafted back at the end of September. I received some more information since then, and I finally have some time to give you an update. Reader warning: the following contains some grumpiness, and probably far more detail about fridges than you could ever want.

Now, about that fridge. I spent quite a bit of time at the Office of Energy Efficiency (OEE) website, reviewing their refrigerator energy efficiency ratings, and getting irritated. The fridges are grouped by volume and features, so you can examine a set of comparable fridges and see which models are most efficient. Volume categories don't work very well for me, because I have a definite width limit (24" max.) and the volume category I'm looking at (10.5 to 12.4 cu. ft.) includes a mixture of wider and narrower fridges. Feature categories just get in the way, because the features are less important to me than the efficiency. However, I persisted, wading through all the different menu combinations, and checking manufacturer or retailer specs for each model in turn to find out which ones actually are 24" wide. I looked at a lot of ratings. I became convinced that there is something fishy here.

EnergyStar models are supposed to be the most efficient. Within a given category, the EnergyStar fridges should have better EnerGuide ratings than the other fridges in that category.

They don't.

Take, for example, the 10.5 to 12.4 cu. ft. category, with auto defrost, any freezer location. Out of 35 fridges listed, three are EnergyStar qualified. All three have the same EnerGuide rating, 439 kWh/yr. Only two fridges in the whole list have worse EnerGuide ratings. Fully 29 of the non-EnergyStar models have ratings that are better by at least 30 kWh/yr.

What's going on?

What's more, those three EnergyStar fridges are all "Liebherr" brand, not available this side of Ontario as far as I can tell. What good is an incentive to buy a fridge, if the fridge isn't available?

In the same size category, without auto defrost, the EnerGuide ratings are better (across the board), and there are no EnergyStar fridges at all. How can that be? Somebody has to be the best in the category; there can't be a blank at the top. A salesman explained that the standard to qualify for EnergyStar labelling is set higher for smaller fridges, and almost no fridges meet the standard. Huh?

I sent an inquiry to the Office of Energy Efficiency:

Why do you set the efficiency standards higher for smaller fridges? The higher standard means that if I want to buy an EnergyStar fridge (no provincial sales tax here in SK), I have to buy a larger fridge, which actually uses more energy per year!

They replied:

Dear Ms. Herman: This is in response to your question from August 22, 2005 regarding refrigerators. Your questions/statements are not necessary [sic] correct.

They went on to tell me (as if I didn't know) that "today's refrigerators are much better energy performers than older models..." Then they repeated exactly what I had asked about:

To be ENERGY STAR qualified, standard-size refrigerators must exceed Government of Canada minimum regulated energy efficiency levels by at least 15 percent. Compact refrigerators must achieve energy efficiency levels that are at least 20 percent higher than the minimum regulated standard in Canada.

Then, without bothering to answer my question, they listed a bunch of places where I could get the same specifications and ratings that I had already reviewed. They went on to state that "the best energy performers are ENERGY STAR qualified refrigerators," and then gave a general description of how energy performance standards and test procedures are set. They didn't mention how the EnergyStar targets are set. Finally they informed me that

The ENERGY STAR is a voluntary (not regulatory) labeling program designed to identify and promote energy-efficient products to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and aimed at market penetration. ENERGY STAR specifications are intended to recognize the most energy-efficient models in the market; not add cost to these models. Please visit our website (listed above) for more information on energy efficient appliances and other issue [sic] related to energy efficiency. Best Regards, Office of Energy Efficiency

How can they claim that EnergyStar models are best, if the program is voluntary? That small point, buried in their rambling reply, could explain a lot.

I wrote again, pointing out that they hadn't answered my question, and finally got something more like an answer:

As a general rule when developing product specifications, the approach is to recognize the TOP performing models in the marketplace in terms of energy-efficiency. This usually works out to be approximately the top 25% of the best performing products of a given category available in the market.
This is why the 20% was the case for the smaller refrigerators. The selection of the refrigerator size is a personal consumer choice. You are correct, the smaller refrigerators will consume less energy, and choosing an Energy Star product will result in even better energy savings (please refer to 2005 EnerGuide Appliance Directory). The availability and diversity of the products is market driven and controlled by the manufacturers and supply and demand to give the consumers the choice of products based on their lifestyle.

It's more like an answer, but it isn't an answer. If the top 25% of models in a category should be EnergyStar qualified, why are there 0% of models qualifying in the small-fridge category?

I finally decided to give up on the EnergyStar label (even though it confers a sales tax exemption here in Saskatchewan) and just consider the EnerGuide ratings. That makes everything much easier.

So... why do we have the EnergyStar program? How often do people choose EnergyStar as "better," without checking the EnerGuide ratings, and actually get a worse performer? They might even step up to a larger size, or an unnecessary energy-consuming feature, just to get the EnergyStar label. I'm baffled. The only rationale I can think of for the EnergyStar program, is that it helps manufacturers highlight their products as best in a category, instead of having to compete on the full scale of EnerGuide ratings over the full range of products. On the consumer side, the EnergyStar program actively hides the choices that consumers can make to adjust their lifestyle to conserve energy. For example, it gives equal approval to the following products:

• a 26 cu. ft. side-by-side fridge/freezer with auto defrost and through-the-door ice service, at 618 kWh/yr
• a 17 cu. ft. all-fridge, at 335 kWh/yr

and it denies approval to the 10.5 cu. ft. fridge that meets my needs at 328 kWh/yr. As I see it, the cost that goes into administering this program would be much better spent by simply providing a more powerful interface to the EnerGuide directory, so that consumers can short-list models based on their own specific requirements (not generalized categories), and then see for themselves which model has the best rating. A better rating is a better rating.

That concludes what I wrote in September. When I finished, I decided to try just a couple more questions, and give the OEE another chance to give me a clear answer. Here's an update:

Well, well. They took another run at answering my question about smaller fridges, and instead of a clearer answer, I got a different answer. I suspect that this is (finally) the correct one:

As mentioned in earlier email from my group, the ENERGY STAR levels are based on the potential for energy efficiency improvements of a current technology. Smaller fridges have a greater potential for energy efficiency improvements, which is why the level was placed at 20%.

As for that "earlier email," if it exists, it wasn't delivered to me. At any rate, this answer makes more sense than the previous ones. It surprised me, because I would have thought that the high surface-to-volume ratio in a smaller refrigerator would limit the potential for efficiency improvements. (Smaller objects have more surface area for their volume; hence shrews have to eat a lot more for their size than do elephants, because they lose their body heat very fast.) Now that I think of it, if you had two refrigerators equally insulated, one larger and one smaller, the smaller would have to work harder per unit volume. If you increase the insulation equally on both fridges, it should make more difference to the efficiency of the smaller one. Okay, I see the reasoning. It makes sense, but it does nothing to address my objections about the actual impacts of the EnergyStar program.

As for my question about the Liebherr fridges getting EnergyStar qualification even though they are nearly the worst for their size: they tell me it's because they have the freezer on the bottom, and they are competing only with other bottom-freezer fridges. As I suspected, this program is designed for manufacturers, not for consumers. If you're buying an appliance, ignore the EnergyStar labels. The EnerGuide is all you need.

The refrigerator saga

Everything I'd read about conserving energy at home told me I had to replace the 1970s refrigerator. Garth told me it was all a scam to sell more refrigerators. He insisted that the power we'd save would not make up for the resources used in making and transporting a new refrigerator.

I pulled out my EnergyCheck printouts, but they were highly suspect. According to their figures, the potential energy savings around our place exceeded our total energy usage.

Then I pulled out our actual power bills and listed a full year of monthly power costs. Garth started calculating out loud how much of that power probably went to the computer to support my blogging habit, and then...

the wind went out of his sails. He came up with only a fraction of the power use. It had to be going somewhere. "Okay," he said, "you've convinced me."

His brother came down to help him work on vehicles, and I seized the opportunity to get some heavy lifting done. I drove to Carlyle, bought the new refrigerator, helped the two Sears ladies load it (it's a small one, rather light), tied it securely into the truck box (I am sinfully proud of my skill with a few good knots), and brought it home for the men to haul inside. They were desperately trying to finish a repair to the car before Garth had to drive off (in said car) to a weekend event. He was already late when they finished, but they moved the refrigerator in, took the old one out to the garage, and left.

I got busy with the operating manual, carefully wiping out the interior as instructed, although hurrying because of all the food getting warm on the kitchen table. At last I was ready. I plugged it in - and yanked the plug out again.

Surely it wasn't supposed to hiss like that?

Hesitantly, I plugged it in again. Again that spluttering hiss, and I unplugged it quickly.

I walked around it, looking at the coils and compressor for obvious problems. I looked at the warming food. I plugged it in once more. This time I endured the hissing long enough to circle around to where I could see the coils.

My expletives brought curious children onto the scene, as I scrambled to unplug it for good. I could actually see a mist of refrigerant leaking out of a join between the compressor and the coils. What is that stuff? Didn't I read somewhere that the new refrigerants are less damaging to the ozone layer, but not completely harmless? Do I want that stuff in my kitchen? How am I going to solve this mess and get cleaned up and get over to the fowl supper and eat before I'm supposed to be scraping plates at seven?

A couple of phone calls got me an assurance from the Sears ladies that I could exchange the refrigerator the next day, as well as a lecture from a refrigeration technician about worrying about "that stuff you've been fed." I went ahead and worried anyway. There was no answer at Mom and Dad's.

Meanwhile Ruth was building up to a rant about how I wasn't helping her get fed and ready to go to a birthday party. She made some comment along the lines of "Why can't I just have an ordinary life?" and I exploded. She seemed to be suggesting that I actually liked having everything go wrong. She wanted to carry on with her social life as if nothing had happened, and furthermore, she wanted me to help her do that, but she wouldn't consider helping me deal with my refrigerator crisis. But after some shrilling and sobbing on my part, she quietly helped James and me carry all the food out to the old refrigerator in the garage. I took the kids over to the fowl supper, and Ruth paid for both their meals because I didn't have any cash. I walked right in without paying, in my grubby clothes, looking for my Dad. Finally I spotted Mom cutting pies, and she pointed me to Dad's table. In talking with him, I decided that I could probably find out what substance I was dealing with from the manual, and find out its properties from the Internet. I left the kids to fend for themselves at the supper. Ruth was going on from there to the birthday party.

The MSDS for HFC-134a eased my worries somewhat. I opened windows, turned up the thermostat to run the forced air briefly, and then closed off the kitchen and left its window open. I changed into decent clothes, biked downtown for cash and then back to the fowl supper, gulped down turkey dinner in fifteen minutes (no pie for me) and reported for plate scraping duty. When I got home, Ruth was still out at the party. I phoned over to find out when she would be getting home - 10:30 or eleven was the reply. I waited up.

At 2 a.m. I finally put together a vague recollection of Ruth saying something about a sleepover, with the obvious fact that she was not home yet, and realized that 10:30 meant: in the morning.

James wakes early, so I woke early, and set to work preparing to take the refrigerator back. Dad had said he would help move it, but he was out somewhere. I found that I could roll it along a smooth floor by myself, so I moved it out near the front door. Then I rewired the electrical outlet for it, because the old refrigerator hadn't needed a grounding outlet. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the cable supplying the box did have a ground, so I didn't have to fish any wire, just put in a new receptacle. Mom and Dad arrived, and we got the refrigerator back into the truck and tried to replace the packing materials around it to the way they were before. I was tying it down, making some self-congratulatory remark about my trusty knots, when Dad pointed out that my two-way tie-down wouldn't keep the refrigerator from tipping forward over my toolbox. I guess I was lucky on the first trip. We made it a three-way tiedown, and off I went.

At Carlyle, I helped the two Sears ladies unload the damaged refrigerator and load another one. When I got back home, I phoned Dad but Mom told me he was now out mowing ski trails. To be ready for his assistance, I backed the truck up to the step, working it into just the right angle for the maximum overlap of the tailgate onto the step. With all the back-and-forth manoeuvering to get the angle, I developed a pretty good sense of where the step was. I knew I was close but stopped backing and got out to check how much room I had left.

About an inch.


I untied all my trusty knots and slid the refrigerator onto the tailgate. It was only a couple of inches of drop onto the step; surely I could manage it. I did.

I took the packing materials off, except for the foam slab underneath, and pivoted the refrigerator into place directly in front of the door. It was just a couple of inches up to get over the sill.

"Ruth," I called, "I think we can do this."

She came and looked at the situation and confidently agreed. James came to help. We got one refrigerator foot hooked over the door sill, and there it stuck. Ruth kept trying to get me out of the way so she could lift. I kept trying to figure out what was holding it. Ruth tried to push it "that way" without looking at where I was pointing. Finally we got it slid along the door sill enough that it could tilt in the necessary direction, the second foot cleared the sill, and we were away. Ruth phoned Mom and told her, "We got it moved in, so Grampa doesn't have to come."

"Good Gracious!" said Mom.

We rolled it into the kitchen, and I repeated the wiping-out ritual, and tried plugging it in.

Just a sweet hum from the compressor, nothing more.

It was time to put the food in, but I hesitated. The door should be reversed, and if I loaded all the food in now, we might just never get around to changing the door. The manual said I should have a helper, because the refrigerator would have to be tilted.

I thought about it. I looked at the refrigerator. I pulled it away from the wall and leaned it, pulled it a little farther from the wall and leaned it again, until I found a secure balancing point. Ruth steadied the refrigerator when I reached the point of actually pulling off the door. A little more work and it was done.

Just a few hours afterward, I found myself thinking about my upcoming time without Garth around to help me, and feeling a bit daunted. Then I thought about the refrigerator saga.

It's okay, I thought.

I can do this.