[jbm]

I should bring up that top opening chest fridges are actually pretty great for energy efficiency!

https://youtu.be/CGAhWgkKlHI

The amount of electricity needed is so small that it might even be comparable (mobile so i haven't calculated yet)

[CyberDildonics]

You are WAY off. An efficient top freezer will still use about a kilowatt hour per day. A typical phone will use 1/100th of that.

https://ecocostsavings.com/freezer-wattage-energy-efficient/

[jbm]

I definitely was wrong; they are "comparable", but the phone is much more energy efficient.

I looked it up online, and apparently the "average amount" used by a phone is 15Wh or 0.015kWh per day.

A chest freezer apparently uses ~0.55 kWh per day, or 36 times the amount of electricity.

I don't know if the phone includes energy loss during charging, or if that is the amount being drained from the battery.

It's not 1/100th, but it is still quite a bit more. Considering this is mostly caused by insulation, I wonder if there are ways to improve the insulation to reduce this energy use further.

[micromacrofoot]

Absolutely terrible for usability though, which is why no one has one in their kitchen.

[thaumasiotes]

But lots of people have deep refrigerators, which cause exactly the same usability problem ("most of the stuff in the fridge cannot be accessed, because the stuff between it and the door blocks it").

[micromacrofoot]

It doesn't really though, I've lived with a chest refrigerator so I know this experience.

With a deep fridge you can push things to the side, reach over them, etc... you can still kind of see where everything is if you move your head to look around other items.

With a chest fridge you stack everything.

This can:

* more completely obscure other items

* squish items

* require you to move items to find what you want (i.e. pile them on top of other items)

Then you have things like... cartons of milk and various other bottles, which aren't designed to be stacked vertically, but are mostly optimized to be next to other items.

You also lose the utility of having a smaller shelved door area. You can have a level of shelving in a chest refrigerator (basically sliding racks/baskets)... but these become more things you need to move to see other things. With doors they're naturally out of the way on fridge open.

You also have the problem of spills. In a standard fridge a spill means I pick up items, wipe the bottom, put them on another shelf temporarily... then wipe the shelf and replace. Needless to say, spilling anything into a chest refrigerator is a nightmare. You have to remove nearly everything... and since so much is stacked, it's much messier.

[thaumasiotes]

You're right that several problems are worse in the chest fridge. Squishing and cleaning are real differences. The shelving in the door is very useful... but it's useful because the door is shallow. A one-item-deep door can't block access to the rear layers of stuff that it doesn't contain.

A deep vertical refrigerator already completely obscures most of its contents, requires you to move items in order to get what you want, and contains drawers where the contents are not only stacked but completely invisible until you specifically open the drawer to search inside.

Your reference to moving items in the fridge from one shelf to another shelf (temporarily) in order to clean up a spill tells me that you're not engaging in typical deep refrigerator use. The other shelf is already full; to clean up a spill, you need to pull the things that were in the dirty area out of the fridge.

[micromacrofoot]

Completely possible I just dont keep my fridge as full as some people! but I do not miss the chest fridge despite its glorious efficiency

[Scoundreller]

Would make a lot of sense if it was just built into the counter-top imo.

[function_seven]

Nah, that just makes that section of countertop "forbidden space". Can place anything on it (toaster, microwave, coffeemaker, etc.), can't use it for prep space unless you already know you won't need anything from the freezer. Can't let any dirty dishes pile up there.

But why not have a chest freezer underneath the countertop, but as a pull-out drawer? Same benefits of a top opening, but no need to dedicate a section of countertop for the lid to open.

[Scoundreller]

Not impossible but needs really heavy duty sliding drawer thingies. Usually anything I’d take out of the freezer would be taken out much in advance of meal prep to thaw (ideally in a fridge the day before).

But yeah, for a fridge, that’s not as easy.

[micromacrofoot]

Until you need something from the fridge while you're cutting something on the countertop... or you spill something on the countertop and it leaks down into the fridge.