When I was a kid, our family dog would drag his blanket to our fridge and spend the night bundled up in front of it (where the exhaust heat was)
this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2026
174 points (93.5% liked)
196
6092 readers
2092 users here now
Community Rules
You must post before you leave
Be nice. Assume others have good intent (within reason).
Block or ignore posts, comments, and users that irritate you in some way rather than engaging. Report if they are actually breaking community rules.
Use content warnings and/or mark as NSFW when appropriate. Most posts with content warnings likely need to be marked NSFW.
Most 196 posts are memes, shitposts, cute images, or even just recent things that happened, etc. There is no real theme, but try to avoid posts that are very inflammatory, offensive, very low quality, or very "off topic".
Bigotry is not allowed, this includes (but is not limited to): Homophobia, Transphobia, Racism, Sexism, Abelism, Classism, or discrimination based on things like Ethnicity, Nationality, Language, or Religion.
Avoid shilling for corporations, posting advertisements, or promoting exploitation of workers.
Proselytization, support, or defense of authoritarianism is not welcome. This includes but is not limited to: imperialism, nationalism, genocide denial, ethnic or racial supremacy, fascism, Nazism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, etc.
Avoid AI generated content.
Avoid misinformation.
Avoid incomprehensible posts.
No threats or personal attacks.
No spam.
Moderator Guidelines
Moderator Guidelines
- Don’t be mean to users. Be gentle or neutral.
- Most moderator actions which have a modlog message should include your username.
- When in doubt about whether or not a user is problematic, send them a DM.
- Don’t waste time debating/arguing with problematic users.
- Assume the best, but don’t tolerate sealioning/just asking questions/concern trolling.
- Ask another mod to take over cases you struggle with, if you get tired, or when things get personal.
- Ask the other mods for advice when things get complicated.
- Share everything you do in the mod matrix, both so several mods aren't unknowingly handling the same issues, but also so you can receive feedback on what you intend to do.
- Don't rush mod actions. If a case doesn't need to be handled right away, consider taking a short break before getting to it. This is to say, cool down and make room for feedback.
- Don’t perform too much moderation in the comments, except if you want a verdict to be public or to ask people to dial a convo down/stop. Single comment warnings are okay.
- Send users concise DMs about verdicts about them, such as bans etc, except in cases where it is clear we don’t want them at all, such as obvious transphobes. No need to notify someone they haven’t been banned of course.
- Explain to a user why their behavior is problematic and how it is distressing others rather than engage with whatever they are saying. Ask them to avoid this in the future and send them packing if they do not comply.
- First warn users, then temp ban them, then finally perma ban them when they break the rules or act inappropriately. Skip steps if necessary.
- Use neutral statements like “this statement can be considered transphobic” rather than “you are being transphobic”.
- No large decisions or actions without community input (polls or meta posts f.ex.).
- Large internal decisions (such as ousting a mod) might require a vote, needing more than 50% of the votes to pass. Also consider asking the community for feedback.
- Remember you are a voluntary moderator. You don’t get paid. Take a break when you need one. Perhaps ask another moderator to step in if necessary.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I have a better idea
One system that is both an Air conditioning system that uses waste heat to heat water. And uses waste "cold" from heating water to cool house.
I can get you half way there with a heat pump water heater.
Theoretically you could use a heat pump to heat water that would generate "waste cold", but heat pumps typically don't get nearly hot enough to heat water as much as a gas water heater does. I suppose one could be made but it would be very difficult, I think. It would need to use the ambient air in your house and suck enough heat out of it to heat your water, and if your house is about 72°F / 22°C and you want water at 130°F / 54°C (which is pretty typical) that seems like a challenge, especially since water is so much denser and has a higher heat capacity. I have a portable A/C with a heat pump and it starts to struggle to heat my apartment once it gets down to 45-50F outside and it struggles to cool once it gets above 95F.
GE currently sells a heat pump water heater on the market, I'm not sure if it uses resistive heating to supplement the heat pump
I have a portable A/C with a heat pump and it starts to struggle to heat my apartment once it gets down to 45-50F outside and it struggles to cool once it gets above 95F.
Your AC may be undersized if it doesn't perform well in hot weather, also unfortunately many heat pumps aren't optimized for extreme cold weather performance. Some are, it's definitely not a failure of heat pumps in general, but you'll only find those as permanent install units and they're usually only sold up north.
A lot of newer water heaters use essentially an air conditioner type system to heat the water and blow cold/cool air away from it. Obviously only useful if you have your water heater in an area that can make use of said a/c, but I did and it was glorious.
Yeah but now you've got to find a place to store or how to discard all the little arrows, and the orange light probably is too bright at night
No joke, I think thermal networking will one day be common in homes.
It exists to some extent already in large commercial building design if only because the business sense of the added efficiency is easy to illustrate at that scale.
especially in areas with district heating, it's a massive resource we're just throwing away currently.
This is why I don't think fridges should have their own cut out. It blocks the air flow
They literally do that already. Heat doesn’t vanish from your food. It’s moved from the inside of the box to the outside of the box.
It’s an air conditioner built into a cooler.
It also won't put out much more heat than is already in the room. It evacuates heat from it's interior, heat that was already present in the room. If the room was colder than the inside of the fridge, it wouldn't produce any heat at all. the thermostat would cut off after the temperature equalized and it wouldn't run at all.
When it does run it produces maybe a few dozen watts of waste heat. Definitely not useful to heat a space with.
Fridges have always been doing that for ages. I'd rather not let them dump heat indoors and instead move the heat directly outdoors to keep my air conditioner from running too hard.
That's... Kind of what it already does though. It's just that it's not cooling the inside enough to heat very much of your house.
Why did I have to scroll to the bottom to find this? Like, where did you think the removed heat was going otherwise???
The heat is moved outside the environment
Heat is stored in the microwave.
Wow, I wooshed myself even harder than they to whomst I was replying. Good job me.
HVAC is just the Patrick star push the city meme with heat
Okay, but hear me out. If you reverse it, you'll have a heat pump oven that also cools your house. 🤓
a heat pump oven sounds like an actually cool idea. why is it not a thing yet?
The difference between oven temperature and room temperature is too high for it to be efficient. Like, a fridge is maybe cooling things 30F (~15C) maybe 50 (~25) for the freezer. An oven goes to like 500F 260C, so it would have to maintain a heat differential of like 430 (~215) degrees. Like, it’s just less efficient than a resistive coil at that point.
Would be great for people that love yogurt.
Can anyone explain why almost everyone operates a fridge inside a heated house in winter while there is "a fridge outside". Would the fridge not need less power to cool down the insides when it's already cold outside?
Am I really the only one in this world with a fridge outside?
In Paris a lot of apartments had a cellar opening on the outside.
Like this one:
Unfortunately a lot of them have been removed since it's much easier to have everything in the fridge at constant temperature and energy used to be cheap.
Fridge is expensive, only have one.
Fridge is large and heavy, not worth trouble of moving outside.
Waste heat from fridge go to heating house anyway with efficiency above typical resistive heater can manage before even consider double benefit of also cooling food.
Maybe someone will do the math.
This was originally what cellars and basements were for. Ground temperature was stable relative to outside temperatures, so it was warmer than freezing during winter but colder than outside during summer. Thus it could help preserve food.
Some old farm houses still have that around here. But it is outside below a small hill or a slope. Some call it Kartoffel Keller. And some still use it for long time storage.
Sometimes they’re called a “root cellar” in the US, as they were often used for storing root vegetables; carrots, turnips and potatoes. So common etymology there.
- Stability. Temperature outside fluctuates, food could freeze or get too warm.
- Containment. The fridge prevents critters from getting to your food.
- Location. The fridge is conveniently located in the kitchen.
In winter I do tend to keep drinks outside if the temps are alright, they cool down faster outside than in a fridge anyway.
I am using a fridge outside: It is like a small balcony first floor with a roof and cool most of the year. So #1 and #2 are checked. For #3 I have a small Japanese compressor fridge in the kitchen, only for the very important daily things like milk. The mustard stays in the outside fridge. The kitchen fridge never uses more than 30W for cooling. But only IF it runs. So that checks #3.
if you're already heating your home, then what does it hurt to have the fridge do a bit more of that?
in fact, the fridge is a tiny heat pump using your food as the reservoir. so unless your house is heat pump equipped, it is beneficial energy wise to keep the fridge inside.
if your house is heat pump equipped, then it depends on how the efficiency compare. if you put lots of hot food into your fridge then you should definitely keep it inside.
Don't forget that refrigeration is costly tech magic though. Power hungry and requires toxic chemicals.
Real easy answer: keeping a fridge cool during a very hot summer outside requires a more powerful cooling system. Instead most people have a powerful AC since you want the house cool anyway, with a cheaper fridge cooling system
The reverse is also true. You wouldnt want your fridge to require a heater installed in it to keep your food from freezing in esspecially cold winters
Mucki said in winter.
To your second point, if I can deduce by the feddit.org that Mucki is in Germany, the winter outside temp will swing between -5° and +10°. The isolation of the fridge might be enough. But I sometimes put a stew or soup just outside on the balcony without a fridge.
We have only very few days where we have extreme icecoldness around. It's a moderate climate. I never monitored how much less power it uses outside than inside... But It stricked me that the cooling cycles are much shorter in winter after I had put it outside.
weird kitchen, if i am cooking on the stove and i want an ingredient from the fridge, i have to walk around that wall, and we know that's something we do multiple times
I mean, it's AI generated, so it isn't going to make sense lol
load more comments
(4 replies)
Id rather have one that sends it's heat outside the house so my AC isn't fighting the fridge. And reverse that in the winter.
The fridge would actually have to work harder though, to maintain a larger temperature difference between its hot and cold sides. So it'll likely use more energy than the way fridges normally work.
In winter, if it's cold enough outside, refrigeration may not actually be needed. You could just pump coolant between inside the fridge and an external radiator to cool it.
But, now you have a more complicated system that requires more permanent installation into the house, and also has an outdoor radiator that needs to be maintained so it doesn't get clogged with leaves or damaged.
Not too worried about how permanent the installation is. I mean how often do you move the fridge around your kitchen? Besides, these days a lot of them have a water faucet installed for the ice maker anyway. As for efficiency, the AC has to fight the same gradient already, but with the heat being dumped inside it has to overcome it twice.
It would add complexity and points of breakage, so it would need to be a robust enough system to make it worth it, which fights against it adding enough efficiency to be worth it.
load more comments
(6 replies)
The fridge would actually have to work harder though, to maintain a larger temperature difference between its hot and cold sides. So it'll likely use more energy than the way fridges normally work.
I think their idea is to still use the chill air from the room for cooling the heat exchanger of the fridge, but transporting the then hotter air outside of the house (like a proper kitchen hood does) instead of keeping it in the kitchen.
I think though that if it's hot out, that would increase your cooling demand - moving warm air out of the fridge means pulling that same amount of air in, from outside (potentially higher temperature than the fridge exhaust). So in that case it is probably disadvantageous.
load more comments
(1 replies)
view more: next ›