Stop appliance genocide

[Sandy G]

I think the WHOLE "Green" thing is about 90% crapola anyway. Now we got lite bubs that are gonna cost $10.95 a piece, showers that put out less pressure than an arthritic mouse on a flat rock, & commodes that you gotta flush at least 2X to get Yr Business Done-How is any of THAT "Saving" the planet ? Horse hockey...

[snelson903]

the green thing, is green in the pockets of the state, local, & fed .just a new way to charge more for everything . we could be useing are own oil ,gas ,coal ,exct.

[Reece]

The older fridges from the thirties and forties, with their little inside freezer compartments, really used very little juice and were very quiet. But you had to defrost them manually, which is a real pain to do. The newer ones are bigger and no frost: to get the latter feature they have to have internal fans to circulate air over the cooling coils, and then heaters to defrost those coils daily. All that takes juice. I like the old fridges but for the size, large freezer section, convenience of no frost, I gladly pay an extra KWH or two at 8 cents each, per day.

[Sandy G]

Buddy of mine & his college roomate had a unique way of defrosting THEIR fridge....Taking a soldering iron, making holes in the ice, then stuffing a Bottle Rocket in the holes, & setting it off...BLAMMO ! But it worked...Both these guys were pretty smart & had WAY too much time on their hands...Which is always DANGEROUS...(grin)

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

Buddy of mine & his college roomate had a unique way of defrosting THEIR fridge....Taking a soldering iron, making holes in the ice, then stuffing a Bottle Rocket in the holes, & setting it off...BLAMMO ! But it worked...Both these guys were pretty smart & had WAY too much time on their hands...Which is always DANGEROUS...(grin)

that is probably the funniest thing I've read in the last week!

Were they also the 'remove stump with as much dynamite as you can pack in to it' types?

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

Buddy of mine & his college roomate had a unique way of defrosting THEIR fridge....Taking a soldering iron, making holes in the ice, then stuffing a Bottle Rocket in the holes, & setting it off...BLAMMO ! But it worked...Both these guys were pretty smart & had WAY too much time on their hands...Which is always DANGEROUS...(grin)

I'm amazed the entire refrigerator didn't explode into the proverbial "million pieces" when the bottle rocket(s) went off.

You are so right about your friend and his college roommate having too much time on their hands. Did they get away with their very risky stunt?

Using any kind of explosive device if you don't know (or are not sure of) what you are doing can be lethal, as well as risky and/or downright dangerous. Were they living in an off-campus apartment or in a dormitory? In either situation, I'd think they would have been sternly warned or even punished if word of their stunt ever got out. If they were in a dormitory, they would likely hear from the campus police; if they were in an off-campus apartment, they would get the boom lowered on them (and possibly evicted) by the landlord.

[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

Using any kind of explosive device if you don't know (or are not sure of) what you are doing can be lethal, as well as risky and/or downright dangerous.

Here is a "classic" example of the use of explosives by people that thought they knew what they were doing, back in 1970:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79tl2H3QzT0


jr

[leadlike]

Ah yes...the PPL oldest fridge contest. They had an ad for this in the paper the other night, I think it was a half page. I just remember that it spelled energy as "enegry". The mistake wasn't buried in the ad copy, but rather boldly printed on one of the headlines in the ad.

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by jr_tech

Here is a "classic" example of the use of explosives by people that thought they knew what they were doing, back in 1970:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79tl2H3QzT0


jr

[bgk283]

no government program is going to come between me and my Crosley Shelvador

[DavGoodlin]

Every 2 months, the old Westinghouse gets like an igloo so bad the "icebox" door won't close, just put a big tray under the coil to catch the melt and let it air out for a day. Its sure a pain if its your kitchen fridge.

[Sandy G]

Yep...Winston, my buddy's roomate, inherited this farm that was FULL of stumps.. He & John got a case or so of Dyna-Might, & Set To...This was before I knew Winston, or I'd likely wheedled in on the deal...They blew up stumps for 2 or 3 days-And had a helluva good time doing it....Another buddy got some dynamite, just cause he wanted to, & we had a Dynamite Party one night...You can toss a 1/4, 1/2 stick on the ground, set it off, all it does is make a loud BANG ! & maybe blow out a couple handfulls of dirt. Big whoop. But now, if you put something on TOP of it, say a hay bale, or an old tire, IT will get blown sky-high, & is most impressive.

[Nick_the_'Nole]

Plasmas are terrible for power consumption... you don't even have to hook up a meter to one to tell that much, just stand about 3 feet away and you can feel the heat off 'em.

LCDs aren't that great either... and some of the fancy "eco" LED ones actually draw more power than comparable CCFL-backlit units. The 42" Hitachi LED unit we have here pulls about 130W on a pretty low brightness setting.

OTOH, I picked up a 2004-ish 52" CRT rear-projection HDTV off the side of the road a year or so ago, and fixed it up for a friend. Out of curiosity I hooked it up to the Kill-A-Watt and could hardly believe the reading I got... it was something like 65W.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Nick_the_'Nole

LCDs aren't that great either... and some of the fancy "eco" LED ones actually draw more power than comparable CCFL-backlit units. The 42" Hitachi LED unit we have here pulls about 130W on a pretty low brightness setting.

My Insignia 19e720a12 19" LED-LCD flat panel draws 25 watts when operating, under one watt in standby, and is Energy Star certified, according to its specifications in the instruction manual.

The new flat screens with LED backlights should draw much less current than the earlier ones with CCFL backlighting. Of course, the larger screen sets will draw more current, even using LEDs as backlights. I have read here of some very large flat screens that draw upwards of 500 watts; someone mentioned in a post recently here at VK a flat screen that drew 580 watts (!) in normal operation. Much of that may well be due to the power source for the backlight (CCFL[s]) -- again, the larger the lamp (or the number of lamps), the more current will be required to operate them. My best guess is that 80 percent of the power draw of a modern large-screen flat panel TV is the power supply for the backlights, since there are no power-hogging tubes in the TV chassis or electron beams in the panel itself. Home theater setups with 1kW, 5.1(or more)-channel surround sound and a large TV, however, are a different story. These can and often do draw well upwards of 500 watts, and will drive the owner's energy bill sky high if he or she (or his or her family) watches a lot of TV and/or listens to the sound system for hours at a time. I can also envision a set like miniman82's DLP drawing 500+ watts, due to the arc lamp and its hefty power supply.

[uxwbill]

Originally Posted by DavGoodlin

I can no longer remain silent about this heinous baloney.

I agree completely. Perhaps I'd better be careful, lest I really get worked up into a lather about this sort of thing.

One of the electrical utilities around here is running a "turn in your energy hog" campaign. Their plan is collect old refrigerators that are still working and give the owner a little bit of cash for them (about $30 or so).

I'm not sure what they expect someone to do with the $30, as it won't put even a minor dent into the purchase of a new refrigerator to replace the old one. That's the first problem...even the most basic new refrigerators sold at various home improvement stores around here are eye-poppingly expensive.

Second problem...reliability. I hear lots of people who traded in an old but perfectly functional refrigerator say that they wish they hadn't as the new replacement is not as reliable.

Third...is the efficiency really better? Though I don't have any truly hard evidence of this, I'd swear the older refrigerants remove heat better than the newer, greener ones. I know my 1974 GE refrigerator with R12 (IIRC) cools down a whole lot faster than a very similar 2001 model charged with R134A. Both share the same basic physical design, only the styling has evolved to stay with the times.

I also hear from lots of people who buy new dehumidifiers, only to have them last only about a year before the fan motor breaks or the cooling system leaks. These things aren't cheap either! My 40-year-old (sold new in late 1973) Sears Coldspot "Blotter" dehumidifier is still running perfectly, with one replacement fan motor and a new electrical plug in all of its years. Power draw numbers between it and a newer (1995) Magic Chef unit are within a few percent of each other.

Compressor motors, thermostats, and evap/condenser coils sure don't seem to have changed much. I supppose that maybe their internals have been redesigned a little over time, but that's probably about it. Materials used to insulate the refrigerator also seem to have changed little.

As long as the door seals on an older fridge are good and the cooling system is healthy, I just can't see there being a whole lot of difference.