Our fridge failed overnight. We've had it a long time, so will just replace.
I looked on Amazon and AO, so far. Nearly all the standalone fridges have an "energy efficiency" of F. Obviously I was looking for an A++, but turns out the labelling has changed since last year, and those + categories don't exist anymore
However, there still should be A-F categories, but the best I can find anywhere is a D, for £1500.
What's going on here - have I misunderstood the new labelling, or is and A,B or C so unachievable that pretty much all fridges are now just F and that's your lot?
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We were in the same boat last year when installing the new kitchen. Bosch F rated purchased in the end from AO (very good service)...
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The easy way to make a fridge more efficient is to increase the thickness of the insulation. Typically freezers are more efficient than fridges because they have a lot thicker insulation. Look at the thickness of your freezer door.
Unfortunately if you further increase the insulation without increasing the exterior size of the fridge you drastically reduce the storage capacity. This would be very apparent in small fridges as favoured in the UK and European markets and would be unpopular with consumers.
Last edited by: CGNorwich on Wed 8 Jun 22 at 09:56
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Yes I was shocked when buying a 50/50 fridge freezer a few weeks ago. It's going in an unheated garage which further complicates the choice. Ended up with an F rated Blomberg (sub-brand of Beko). Made by a company in Turkey called Arcelik, whose owner is Koc International. I take an interest in these things. The Blomberg will apparently work down to -10C.
www.euronics.co.uk/catalogue/refrigeration/fridge-freezers/freestanding-fridge-freezers/blomberg-kgm4663-595cm-fridge-freezer-white-frost-free/p/036KGM4663
My supplier of choice for domestic appliances at the moment is the Euronics shop in Leighton Buzzard. I was struggling to get 2 Neff ovens from the same range, the big firms were no help but they got on to the distributor and found me what I wanted. They also got me the Bosch laundry appliances I wanted, which I notice are also made in Turkey.
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My local Euronics dealership is ok. The one a couple of towns away is excellent - on the experience of purchasing a range cooker from them.
Large, well known companies refused delivery because the kitchen is up 4 or 5 steps and there are about a dozen steps from the drive to the front door (though it's the internal steps that they had problems with).
I called the local Euronics dealer who didn't have stock. The one in the next town was able to get stock and offered delivery within 7 days.
I explained the situation re the stairs and was told that they are used to them so no problem.
The day after ordering and paying for it (credit card) I got a call from their service department asking about my gas connector and I sent them a photograph of it.
It didn't meet standards and they said it would need to be fixed before they could connect the cooker up. They had a gas man who could do it or I could call my own (who would probably be quicker as he didn't need to travel 40 minutes to get to us).
Cost of bringing the gas pipe up to standard (about £200).
The cooker was delivered, installed and shown working and over a cold drink, the fitter mentioned the fittings looked nice and new and I confirmed that they were just done and said it cost £200.
Next day I got a phone call from the shop refunding half the cost new gas fittings (£100) as a goodwill gesture and it appeared on my credit card a few days later.
(And the cost of the cooker was about £50 cheaper than the best price that I could find on line.)
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I'm in the market for a new fridge/freezer and found the locel Euronics considerably more expensive than AO.
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We replaced the fridge freezer at Ted Towers a couple of years ago. We have a very good local white goods indy in the village. They delivered and took away the old one.
It was only when I came to fit it that I saw it wasn't 50/50. Being integrated, the fridge doors didn't line up with the outer doors. I had to raise the appliance about 3 inches on blocks to get a match. It's fine now but the Tyrant Queen can't quite reach the top at 5' 2". A little step-stool sorted her out.
Ted
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Out of curiosity I looked up the energy usage (KWH pa) rather than the energy label.
An "F" rated item uses ~400KWH, a "D" ~250KWH. At ~30p per KWH this is £75-120 pa.
Whether it is finance or energy efficiency which is important is a personal decision.
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I've successfully done loads of work over the past few years to minimise our power usage, for both reasons, but have never tackled the garage fridge freezer nor our aging freezer, both of which are probably worse than those costs.
I have a smart plug which records usage so I'll measure them...
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Just checked my electricity usage. For last week when I was away from the house and the only appliance in use was the fridge/freezer the electricity charge was 47p per day (1.70 kWh)
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>> Just checked my electricity usage. For last week when I was away from the house
>> and the only appliance in use was the fridge/freezer the electricity charge was 47p per
>> day (1.70 kWh)
Do you turn all the vampires (plug in transformers) off? No alarm, lights left on? DECT phone? modem router?
I'm away for a week shortly so I'll try this.
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The router and phone left on but these devices use so little power they hardly register. Nor do transformers when not charging come to that although they were switched off.
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A bog-standard ISP supplied router averages about 10W so ~7ppd at ~30p/KWh.
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Mine is 6W so say 4p pd so hardly worth turning off.
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The energy label should have the actual estimated consumption on it in kWh. The band takes into account fridge / freezer volume as well as energy consumed.
The label for the 'Blomberg' which is 324 litres is 318kWh/yr and it is an F. 318kWh at 30p is about £100. I actually can't find a 600 wide fridge/freezer on AO that is better than F, so I suspect the E ones are benefitting from a better cost per litre because of their size - they all seem to be over 400 litres volume so could well use the same or more electricity as a 324 litre F.
I can't find the detailed calculation of the bands anywhere.
Last edited by: Manatee on Wed 8 Jun 22 at 18:49
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Well, thanks all for the comprehensive explanations and discussion.
I did indeed give up and just find the cost to run, for comparisons. I picked a Liebherr, which in the product data sheet says it costs £18.33 a year. I expect that's ten year old data and a unit cost of minus tenpence, but whatever. Available. Right size. Right colour. Right features. £300. Done, assuming AO now deliver on schedule.
The extra fun is that Mrs C needs to keep her insulin in the fridge, so it's not just the milk might go a bit sniffy. Luckily our lovely neighbour now has it in his fridge for a while.
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radio 4 today. the facts and figures for home appliances. Seems the higher cost of top rated stuff is not really worth it
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A good full height F-F wiĺl be using around 100 kWh/year, or around £30, so with a 10 year life expectancy (although our Bosch has been humming for 25 years now), a £700 price difference over a 400 kWh machine would be a justifiable expense.
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Hmmm well it's early days yet (well, nights, as I only turned it on at 20:00 last night) but my garage fridge freezer has used 823kWh in 13 hours. The garage doesn't get hot but it'll be interesting to see how much it uses over a full day - looks like at least 1.5kWh (circa £180 pa, £15pm), which makes it rather pricey to run. It'd suit me to reclaim the space but SWMBO won't agree I'm sure.
Of course the solar panels mean that it doesn't all come from the grid when the weather is right.
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>>823kWh in 13 hours
Wh presumably.
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No. :-)
Yes, absolutely. The display is 0.962 now, so nearly 1 kWh in 15 hours.
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>> A good full height F-F wiĺl be using around 100 kWh/year, or around £30, so
>> with a 10 year life expectancy (although our Bosch has been humming for 25 years
>> now), a £700 price difference over a 400 kWh machine would be a justifiable expense.
That would be an A rated one. They do exist. The one I found was an LG, 110kWh/yr, £1600. I wouldn't have bought it anyway, but it is unsuitable for unheated space.
Spending c.£700 seems to get you down to about 200kWh. So I could spent £250 to save around £30 a year, which seems fairly evenly balanced.
As it's in the garage, and I'm not short of space in there, maybe I can add some external insulation!
Last edited by: Manatee on Thu 9 Jun 22 at 09:50
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What are you guys using to measure the electricity consumption?
Thanks.
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Only a teensy weensy amount of power.
Mine, maybe not surprisingly, is a smart one and therefore readable from my phone (and from Home Assistant). Though I also have an old fashioned one like Zero's above.
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Just bought 3 x smart sockets with electricity monitoring for £21 from amazon.
Despite what the listing says they are Gosund branded. I have them set up with their phone app.
According to the instructions the app can be connected to the ALexa app which would presumably allow control from elsewhere via the internet. At the moment the app is talking to the plugs via my home wifi.
They seem to work fine and show me what the thing plugged into them is using. They also seem to have a time function.
The 'Chinese' app won't work unless location services are enabled - what is this about? Seem to be common with 'Chinese' stuff. Hence I am wary of connecting to my Alexa account.
smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B09QQCVGSX/
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They just want to know when you're away from home and the house is likely to be unoccupied.
I have a couple of TP-Link sockets that can be accessed from an app (or Alexa etc). You can either sign up with TP-Link and control them from anywhere or pair it with your phone for local-network-only control.
I've written a module for my home monitoring/automation rig so if I have some critical need to access them while I'm in Maldives I can do so via VPN to a Pi. The authentication with these sockets is very simple to hack so mine are restricted to the local net at MAC level.
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>> The authentication with these sockets is very simple to hack so mine are
>> restricted to the local net at MAC level.
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....I'm sure there'll be a chink in your armour ...
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Or you have done something wong
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> ....I'm sure there'll be a chink in your armour ...
There are 5 ESP12F's on the same subnet so colander might be a better description than armour.
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I have two freezers in the garage, a single chest and a drawer. A month or so ago I got a loaf out of the chest and it was soft. It's very old and I thought...Right, it's off to Gumtree later for a replacement.
It hadn't defrosted everything so what was salvageable was shared between the drawer one and the kitchen one. I'd checked the fuse in the plug and it was ok. I had put a small jar of water in to see if it started again....there's no light or any power indication on it. A week later, the water was frozen solid. I put a couple of coins on the ice and monitored it over a couple of weeks.
It defrosted again, fuse checked, ok. re-plugged and it froze again ! Conclusion...plug to socket connection. Plugged the garage microwave into the same socket...nothing ! Freezer into a different socket..fine ever since ! Just shows it's sometimes the simple yet unexpected thing that fools you.
Ted
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Over 2 days the old garage fridge freezer has used almost 3kWh, 546kWh per year. It's hard to work out my actual cost as some is supplied by solar and some comes on the cheap Octopus overnight rate. However we've decided we don't need it running all the time, but we'll keep it there (yes, doors ajar)for use on high days and holidays... Just need to run down the freezer contents.
Next, the old chest freezer... :-)
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Seems the little old freezer is even worse, 3.04 over 36 hours so 740 kWh a year. That's about triple what a class F one supposedly does.
www.ukchestfreezers.co.uk/chest-freezer-energy-consumption
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New freezer ordered. Will pay for itself in about 18 months if the marketing is not bull (and electricity remains high). We worked out the old one was from 1991 so I hope the new one lasts that well - never had a problem with it.
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Your consumption figures made me wonder just how close my new 'F' rated F/F is going to get to the declared 318kWh per year. I've been monitoring for a couple of days and it's using at the rate of about 240kWh which is reassuring. It probably only gets opened a couple of times a day which is no doubt helping.
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The old freezer was 1986. Lasted all that time with no problems...
So measuring the new freezer over the past 5 days has shown consumption equating to 259kWh pa, versus 803 for the old one (measured for the whole week before it went, so comparable temperatures etc).
So with consumption being less than a third of the old one, on my standard tariff (and ignoring the complication of solar and cheap rates) it should pay for itself in 15 months.
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Fridge puzzle - CGNorwich
