My mate reckons keeping is fridge switched off is saving him a lot of money?

kevin52

I use more electricity in the Summer compared with Winter because my south facing kitchen overheats and the fridge and freezer seem to be running all the time.

Schwade

Fridges shouldn't be that expensive to run if he doesn't open the door often anyways.

They use most of the energy cooling it to the suitable temperature and then it doesn't use that much energy once it is at that temperature.

C_Mababejive

grahamc2003 wrote: »

There's a reason for that. They use so little water that even if it took the water from the hot supply, it would only fill with cold water, the hot water being drawn from the tank but only making it part way to the machine, usually. So that means you've heated twice the amount of water necessary - once to put hot water in the pipes, and once to heat the cold water from the pipes which fills the machine.

The op's friend could save loads of money by never having a bath or shower, or perhaps only eating cold food, or not turning lights on in winter...... another way of saying that, imo, you get excellent value from the £80 odd quid per year spent on running a fridge.

Do you know how many litres the average washer uses..? Being tight, i was thinking of hot filling it using a jug from hot tap to detergent drawer..

Brummie71

The average fridge will use about 35w an hour - so your mate is saving roughly £0.004 per hour or about £34 a year. Not sure that makes sense in terms of food wasted or the risk of food poisoning. If he isn't using it to store food, then turning it off makes sense. If he is, then it doesn't.

undaunted

Ask him why he doesn't just switch off the fuse box - he could save a fortune!

If I were you I'd just stick to spending wisely rather than take it to the point of "madness" as he appears to want to do.

marshy50

I don't have a fridge as I buy most things daily I usually fill plastic milk cartons with water and freeze them then I put them in a large Thermos cooler box to keep things cool, you will be amazed how long they stay frozen. This as two benefits the blocks of ice in the freezer fill the space so making the freezer cheaper to run and secondly no need to run a fridge. Don't know how much it saves on electric but saves me buying a new fridge.

Dave_save

I have an example for the OP. I scrapped an old fridge/freezer 2 years ago and repaced with a modern A rated one with similar features costing £220. Electricity usage on average dropped by 15kwh per week equating to around £75 per year. So payback on these is relatively short, particularly if you're replacing an older appliance.

Ben84

A modern European style fridge-freezer is about £30-50 a year. An American style fridge-freezer, well a lot more from what I saw when I looked at a few. They don't just use more because they're bigger, their energy use per square meter of internal space is generally much higher too when I worked it out.

However, whatever type of fridge he has, what is the point having it if not to use it?