frugal living 24

FRUGAL LIVING 24

UTILITIES

REFRIGERATION

As touched on before, you can relatively cheaply provide conventional refrigeration by buying the plug in commercial unit ( around $50 ) that is built specifically to turn a chest freezer ( under $200 ) into a fridge.  Running around ten hours a day you can probably assume 400 watts-about a third of a conventional unit.  If you were paranoid about your solar exposure and bought extra panels to take into account cloudy weather, call it $500 for 300 watts.  You’ll need a few extra batteries to get you through a week, so just call it an even thousand bucks.  Not much more than a regular household fridge and probably cheaper than a propane unit ( which are energy pigs-two tanks a month ).  If you kept the unit in a root cellar or at least on the north side of your home you should enjoy a fridge with minimal cost.  Of course, there are those times when the sun just refuses to come out.  I have enough issues with minimal energy draw, so I’d hate to chance it.  I think an actual old fashion ice box is a much better bet.  That only takes 90 watts for an hour or two and that is only during the non freezing season when you get all that sunshine anyway (  “sunshine to dollars” book.  Worth every penny, the source of most of my solar experiments.  I’ve also been told it is free online, so do a search ).

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Now, an ice box is good enough for most of our needs- dairy and condiments and keeping meat for half a day until cooking.  I never cook leftovers, and if you do that is just a lazy habit that cost you $1,000 for a fridge.  Dairy you can actually keep without a fridge, as well as all condiments except mayonnaise ( in the summer, I don’t trust it at all, but the rest of the year I can safely keep it a week without worry, down underground ).  A fridge is really not strictly necessary although nice to have to assure food safety.  For dairy, cheese keeps just fine for the hard variety if you wrap it in a slightly vinegar wetted cheesecloth.  Butter is kept a week, easily, if you place it in a butter crock which is an upside down butter dish in a water filled larger dish.  The water keeps the air out ( clean the butter dish after each week when you add butter.  And, no need to buy a crock, just use a thin glass for the butter placed upside down in a larger glass with some water in it ).  I don’t need either method, as my underground hovel stays cool enough- in fact, the butter only softens in the hottest summer months in which case I only bring home one stick at a time ( I freeze meat at work, one of the perks of having walk-in freezers, and bring home a bit at a time, and keep the butter there during the summer ).  Eggs keep if you place them in a large enough container so water covers all of them- same principle as the butter.  As for not having a freezer, I used to buy that nights dinner meat each evening after work.  Once that got too expensive I started using works freezer.  If you have to, can your meat rather than freeze it.  That will be my next step if I’m ever unemployed ( if I even can afford to do so-it might be seven days a week lacto-vegetarian rather than my current two ).  To duplicate living underground, when you actually don’t, just dig as deep a hole as you can manage and have an insulated cover for it.  Lower a five gallon poly bucket on a rope, with a twist off top, with your dairy inside.  That should stay pretty cool.

END

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