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My ideas for an innovative and energy efficient Kitchen

I recently wrote this on the newsgroups, but unfortunately, it had errors in it. I'm cleaning it up a bit.

The kitchen in any American home typically wastes a lot of energy. During the winter months, the refridgerator cools off the food by extracting energy from the warm, inside air. This process can be made to be more efficient by using outside air to be circulated in the fridge during the winter months.

During the summer months, the same refridgerator/freezer has a motor which cools off the same foods inside. In order to do this, the motor heats up the air inside the home. Also, the exhaust gases produced by the fridge/freezer unit is warm, and this air is emitted into the home, thus heating it up even further. This raises the temperature of the home during the summer months.

Also during the summer months, the stove and oven raises the temperatures of the home when they are used.

I was thinking of a simple and cost-effective way to eliminate this wastage, and from you, I'd like your thoughts/suggestions/comments.

Here are my ideas: FOR SUMMER MONTHS

  1. The fridge/freezer's motor and exhaust gases should be *outside* the home. The air intakes should be from inside the home.
  2. The stove and oven should be outside the home.
  3. Have your washer/dryer unit outside the home.

FOR WINTER MONTHS

  1. The fridge's air intake should be coming from outside the home where the temperatures are very cold. The motor should be inside the home, and the exhaust gases from the fridge should also be allowed to pass inside the home.
  2. The stove and oven should be inside the home.
  3. Have your washer/dryer inside your home.

Regarding the stove/oven and washer dryer: My opinion is to have a swivel unit which rotates one whole segment of a kitchen wall to the outside. This segment is only about 10 feet wide (the width of your stove/oven + the width of your washer/dryer unit). You see variations

of these swivel walls in *OLD* Scooby Dooby Doo cartoons ; ) They are basically a portion of the wall which rotates (the axis of rotation

is from the floor to the ceiling). My idea is to have the unit swivel out into the garage, or somewhere else outside the home. Then, 6 months later, swivel once more 180 degrees! This idea should be very cheap, easy to install, and won't require extra ducts, hoses, or much extra complexities to the home.

The fridge, on the other hand, would require a little creativity and ingenuity. It would require:

  1. Seperating the motor from the fridge, and being able to keep the DC

motor outside 6 months a year.

  1. Having an air supply to the fridge from the outside during the winter months.
  2. The "swivel method" wouldn't work here because the garage would be very cold, and I would find it unpleasant to go to my freezing garage for some milk during the winter months.

Here are my questions:

  1. How practical are my ideas, and what are the engineering challenges

involved?

  1. How costly would it be to have a 10' wide rotating wall segment?
  2. How much energy would they save?

I would think that the washer/dryer and stove/oven ideas are great and practical, however, the fridge/freezer idea is a little difficult to implement. Perhaps the best thing to do with the fridge is to *NOT* seperate the motor from the fridge/freezer, but treat the fridge/freezer as a whole unit (like the oven and washer/dryer), and move it along with the objects being swiveled (except the fridge is 180

degrees off phase from the other 2 units).

Any and all suggestions are appreciated.

Reply to
zutalors212
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You could certainly cool your food with outside air but the fridge is just a heat pump removing heat from the food and returning it to the room. The motor makes it a net source of heat.

Same as winter

My oven, dryer and water heater are outside for this reason, We don't have much winter here and the A/C is my biggest expense

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Reply to
gfretwell

Hi Gfretwell,

you made some good points.

during the winters, a resident WANTS the heat from the motor to help heat the home, and they also want the cold, outside temp to cool the foods in the fridge during the winter.

so, yes, i expect (and desire) that the heat pump brings in (cold) outside air to cool off the food, and the removed heat gets exhausted/routed to the inside of my home.

Very interesting. Are you utility bills high?

Reply to
zutalors212

I take it that you haven't consulted your wife.

Reply to
Don Kelly

Back a couple of generations ago (before air conditioning was common, maybe even before rural electrivication was common), a prosperous farmhouse would have a "summer kitchen" for the baking and cooking.

challenges

As you may notice, no-one is doing this now. Talk to a home renovation contractor and price out the cost of your "scooby do" wall panel and it will raise the hair on your head. The energy saving will never pay back the cost of construction, let alone compensate for the inconvenience - you'll find that if you build this for *your* wife, you will soon be doing *all* your own cooking and cleaning.

Bill

Reply to
Bill Shymanski

Good thinking. We really need to conserve energy more. . .

Asside from the "technical" engineering problems, there are minor issues to be concidered:

1) Cooking outside is not fun. Consider the bees :) 2) People may steel your stuff from the outside. If you want to turn the wall and put them outside, then put them back, then it may be more efficient "energy wise" to cool the hot air rather than move the whole wall with the machines.

3) In case of a cold winter (I hate michigan winters, can get worse in some states, should I be nagging?), the air could freeze the food, unless you would heat the coming air. Again, which is more efficient? taking heat out or heating?

You can think of ideas to use the the heat generated by the motor to heat something, like the water in the summer.

Reply to
Lost'n Found

I'm not sure you understand my idea, my friend.

The stove/oven and washer/dryer would swivel out to the garage or some sheltered area outside. At this point, it looks as if the garage is the most viable choice.

In the case of cold winters, you're washer/dryer and stove/oven would be *inside* your home. during the hot months, they would be swiveled to the garage area, where the heat from this would not heat up the home, but the garage, or somewhere else outside.

hahahahaha...my wife or my girlfriend won't mind these things.

Reply to
zutalors212

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