Replace your old Fridge / Freezer ?
Posted: Sun Oct 02, 2022 9:12 pm
My parents had a standard sized old Hotpoint fridge / freezer which was circa 25 years old. My mother has been complaining for years that it’s not big enough and more recently she is needing to defrost it more regularly but it was still keeping food cold as you would expect. My father insisted there is nothing wrong with it and there is no room for a larger one. 
I took my mum to Currys for a look at several alternatives and I managed to persuade her to go for the Bosch Series 6 which was more expensive but more efficient with a Best of the Best awards for efficiency. It’s a new C rating but that’s equivalent to the older A+++ rating.
The new one is much taller and a little wider, I had to remove a kitchen wall cupboard for the new one to fit. I also removed a dodgy socket which I found was connected to the lighting circuit.
I started thinking whether it would save any leccy because its almost double the capacity and having higher efficiency is not always better if you buy a bigger one.
My mums is chuffed to bits with it
, but my father went nuts because he thinks there was nothing wrong with the old one in the first place 
. First thing I noticed when it was turned on is that the heat exchanger at the back does not get hot like the old one, it stays only luke warm and the compressor seems to modulate. The freezer also has double the thickness of insulation. 
But what about the energy usage ?
My parents leccy usage is practically constant every day with hardly any variability unless I visit and plug the EV in, hence the 4 obvious days I visited.
After several days data results are now in,
My parents average leccy per day before new fridge freezer 4.22 kWh.
My parents average leccy per day after new fridge freezer 2.32 kWh.
1.9kW saving every day, so on the price cap of 34p / kWh that’s £236 a year.
The fridge cost £809, delivered, installed and old one taken away, so that’s a payback of 3.5 years so it would even be worth buying on credit and using the savings to pay the instalments.
My dad's still going nuts about it though, even though he didn’t pay for it, and he is making all the leccy savings.
The next job is going to be trying to persuade him to ditch the open gas fire which just eats fossil fuel.
I took my mum to Currys for a look at several alternatives and I managed to persuade her to go for the Bosch Series 6 which was more expensive but more efficient with a Best of the Best awards for efficiency. It’s a new C rating but that’s equivalent to the older A+++ rating.
The new one is much taller and a little wider, I had to remove a kitchen wall cupboard for the new one to fit. I also removed a dodgy socket which I found was connected to the lighting circuit.
I started thinking whether it would save any leccy because its almost double the capacity and having higher efficiency is not always better if you buy a bigger one.
My mums is chuffed to bits with it
, but my father went nuts because he thinks there was nothing wrong with the old one in the first place . First thing I noticed when it was turned on is that the heat exchanger at the back does not get hot like the old one, it stays only luke warm and the compressor seems to modulate. The freezer also has double the thickness of insulation. But what about the energy usage ?
My parents leccy usage is practically constant every day with hardly any variability unless I visit and plug the EV in, hence the 4 obvious days I visited.
After several days data results are now in,
My parents average leccy per day before new fridge freezer 4.22 kWh.
My parents average leccy per day after new fridge freezer 2.32 kWh.
1.9kW saving every day, so on the price cap of 34p / kWh that’s £236 a year.
The fridge cost £809, delivered, installed and old one taken away, so that’s a payback of 3.5 years so it would even be worth buying on credit and using the savings to pay the instalments.
My dad's still going nuts about it though, even though he didn’t pay for it, and he is making all the leccy savings.
The next job is going to be trying to persuade him to ditch the open gas fire which just eats fossil fuel.