[tempestn]

It's a cool idea, and might be great for a secondary fridge. For a primary fridge though, it's so much more convenient to have direct access to everything through a vertical door. I like energy efficiency, but I'm willing to pay 300kWh a year (around $40 here) for that convenience, let alone the space efficiency.

[refactor_master]

Most people in dense urban areas would actually pay less. By going vertical you’re freezing a whole m2 that was otherwise necessarily occupied by the fridge. In most places, 300 kWh is much cheaper than an extra irrevocable m2 for your fridge.

Plus, a horizontal fridge is just… convenient. You can’t even put things on top of a vertical fridge.

[seemaze]

I put things on top of my vertical fridge all the time. Also, how do you access a chest fridge with items sitting on top of lid?

[qingcharles]

You can't. A chest fridge/freezer becomes a gravitational singularity sucking random items from every corner of the kitchen to its lid. You can keep trying to return them to their rightful place but in the end it is a fruitless task as the rate of accumulation becomes faster than your speed of repatriation and the contents of the freezer are eventually lost to time behind the "event horizon" of its surface.

source: my lost ice pops

[lostlogin]

This happens in our vertical one.

I need you to describe the pitfalls of doing the laundry in your Pratchett style!

[hn_throwaway_99]

I literally don't understand this comment at all. What point are you trying to make?

[frogulis]

They seem to have mixed up horizontal and vertical, and if they did, then my reading is that they're saying the cost of the extra floor space (and the loss of the "shelf" space on top of the fridge) when using a chest fridge makes the economics unfavourable for people in dense urban areas, even with the energy savings.

At least, I'm hoping that's what they meant. If they really meant horizontal and vertical in the way they used it then I've got no idea either.

[OJFord]

I didn't get it until reading your comment, but I think perhaps they meant 'vertical' as in 'it opens vertically' (chest freezer)—i.e. they didn't mix them up exactly, just used them differently than we expected.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Yeah, I understand your first sentence, but the last part of their comment was

"Plus, a horizontal fridge is just… convenient. You can’t even put things on top of a vertical fridge."

Don't they mean a horizontal fridge is a chest fridge? Which would make it sound like they want their whole comment to be in support of a chest fridge? Which is why none of it makes any sense to me.

[frogulis]

That's what makes me think they've simply mixed up horizontal and vertical, because you can't (conveniently) store things on top of a chest fridge, but you can store things on top of a vertical fridge. Basically I think they've got a coherent point if you swap vertical and horizontal throughout their whole comment.

[SR2Z]

Vertical = a fridge that opens around a vertical axis and ditto for horizontal.

[tempestn]

I'm also wondering if "freezing" was meant to be "freeing".

[KPGv2]

Did you by any chance switch "vertical" and "horizontal" at every point in your comment?

[fwipsy]

The words are intrinsically ambiguous. A standard fridge opens horizontally but stands vertically. Is it vertical or horizontal?

[decimalenough]

Horizontal vs vertical is determined by the orientation of the object's longest dimension. Portrait pictures on a wall and fridges with doors that open out are vertical, landscape pictures on a wall and chest freezers are horizontal.

[Hamuko]

I have cabinets over my vertical fridge that has things put in it. There's only like a 15 cm gap between for airflow. How do you slap a cabinet on top of a horizontal fridge?

[TurdF3rguson]

But if I put things on top of it, now I can't get at the food.

I mean, I have one of these as a meat freezer, and sometimes I put things on top of it, and then my wife gets mad at me and moves that thing somewhere because otherwise nobody can open it.

Things on top of my vertical fridge on the other hand (my cat for example), can stay there indefinitely.

[ezst]

Wouldn't a solution be to have the opening on the side and pull it toward you, like a "box on wheels"? As long as the sides of the "box" are thermally insulated, it seems like a sound solution for the stated problem (but certainly not one that's mechanically the cheapest/simplest).

[frogulis]

A friend suggested a bottom-hinged door like that on a garbage chute, though well sealed, and as wide as the fridge, so the sides of the door don't get in the way of storing long objects in the fridge.

[tshaddox]

If you completely remodeled a kitchen around a chest fridge it might not be too terribly inconvenient. But the major blocker is that virtually every kitchen is designed with a perfect spot for a tall, relatively shallow fridge.

[asutekku]

It's inconvenient as soon as you need to get something from the bottom of the fridge, kitchen layout does not change this one at all. And I grew up in a home with multiple chest fridges in addition to a shelved ones so I know the hurdles.

They are good to store something you're not accessing all the time though, like frozen berries etc.

[tshaddox]

I think that inconvenience could be manageable depending on how full the fridge is and what sort of organizing features it has.

It’s already pretty inconvenient to get something out of the back of a traditional fridge that is completely full.

[KPGv2]

Yeah, my in-laws literally stand around the fridge with it open for multiple minutes while they shuffle food around to get to things they've tetrised into the back, and then to re-organize once they've gotten what they need.

They periodically live with us because they're quite old at this point, and my wife and I have already discussed replacing our fridge/freezer combo with a standalone fridge and switching solely to a chest freezer in the mudroom just so they stop doing this with the freezer, too.

The freezer is almost entirely for things already in boxes anyway. Frozen wontons, frozen ice cream cones, microwaveable meals, frozen blocks of fish. It's all easy to organize in a chest freezer.

I'd never considered a chest fridge before, and if I didn't have a wife and kids, as of today I'd be seriously considering it. As it is, can't trust kids not to make an inaccessible mess of something like that, and wife wouldn't like the kitchen arrangement becoming wonky. Though the fridge's current position makes it clear a previous owner didn't understand anything about kitchen layouts when they remodeled a MCM home.

Maybe I could put a chest fridge there with cabinetry above (gap between), and then some place we currently have cabinets all the way to the floor, remove the bottom and put in another chest fridge.

Might be something to consider once we've fixed all the supreme fuckups previous owners did.

[ghaff]

I find French door refrigerators work well. The bottom compartment makes it pretty easy to see everything.

I do have an upright freezer in the basement. If I ever needed to replace it I’d probably get a chest freezer.

[ajb]

It inherently takes more usable space, there's no design that won't lose space, which makes them impractical in smaller homes. To visualise it, for those living in more spacious areas, imagine a "galley" kitchen: 8 spaces one standard unit size, arranged in 4 on each of two opposite walls, with an aisle in between. One unit may be lost to a door. One must be a hob, another the sink. The hob must not have storage above within 60-70cm vertically, due to fire risk; and limits what may be adjacent as well. A window may prevent the use of some spaces above waist height.

A door that opens outwards uses space that has to be clear anyway because that's where you walk. A door that opens upwards takes space that could have been used for another appliance or storage, or the upper half of a fridge twice the size.

The only way round that would be for it to be able to slide outwards, but that's also inconvenient.

Having said all that, they are a great idea if you have the space.

[stock_toaster]

Indeed. I could imagine a very neat one built into the cabinetry where the counter top could be lifted up or something.

[femto]

It would be inconvenient to have to clear the counter each time you want to access the fridge.

[throwaway173738]

I keep my counters largely clear so I can cook, anyway.

[ajb]

Well, but do you never have to open the fridge to get an ingredient, half way through cooking?

[block_dagger]

Cool idea indeed.