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Old 03-21-2015, 11:25 AM   #61
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Quote:
Originally Posted by HolyBus View Post
The part I don't get is why it is not a top loader. With the door on the front, all the cool air falls out.
Nice detail I didn't think of.

Nat

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Old 03-23-2015, 01:32 PM   #62
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We've opted for a 10 cu ft Vissani refrigerator it draws 130 watts with an energy rating of $33 annual cost versus a 4 cu ft fridge that's rated at $36 annual cost. Bought it from Home Depot under $300. For hot plate going to go for an induction hot plate which can be adjusted from 100 to 900watts and heats faster than a microwave and much more compact. We have ours sitting on the counter when being used, only draw back is it doesn't work with non magnetic pans. ie aluminum,
glass, some stainless. We've hardly used the microwave since we got it.
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Old 03-23-2015, 02:06 PM   #63
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FWIW on my BB the side door has breakers, the box on the dash has the fuses. See post 41.
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Old 03-24-2015, 06:45 AM   #64
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dragonpop View Post
We've opted for a 10 cu ft Vissani refrigerator it draws 130 watts with an energy rating of $33 annual cost versus a 4 cu ft fridge that's rated at $36 annual cost. Bought it from Home Depot under $300. For hot plate going to go for an induction hot plate which can be adjusted from 100 to 900watts and heats faster than a microwave and much more compact. We have ours sitting on the counter when being used, only draw back is it doesn't work with non magnetic pans. ie aluminum,
glass, some stainless. We've hardly used the microwave since we got it.
tell us which hot plate ya got. i like the idea of being adjustable and 900 watts max. gotta conserve the solar energy ya know.
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Old 03-24-2015, 07:30 AM   #65
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There are things out there to enable using any pan on an induction stove:

Amazon.com: Max Burton 6010 8-Inch Induction Interface Disk with Heat-Proof Handle: Electric Countertop Burners: Kitchen & Dining

I haven't used it but I doubt there is much risk unless you leave it on the burner and forget after cooking and removing the pan.
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Old 03-24-2015, 09:50 AM   #66
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A lot of off-gridders use deep chest freezers, and for the refrigerator side you just wire a thermostat in to kick it on and off. Huge energy savings. We were actually planning on doing this ourselves - they're cheap, too, and that helps the planning. I think realistically we're going to have power way more often than not so we'll probably go more traditional, but it's definitely a solid idea.
I'm sold on the deep chest freezers, can you elaborate bit on the comment of the refrigerator side wiring a thermostat.

J
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Old 03-24-2015, 08:50 PM   #67
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Lots of people have done this and posted about it online. This is the one I bookmarked as it seemed the least spammy with eHow-style sidebar ads, they'd actually DONE it, and the details are clear and easy to understand:

Convert Chest Freezer To Fridge
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Old 03-24-2015, 09:01 PM   #68
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Induction hot plate

The brand of hot plate that we bought was Mr. Induction but I
am sure there are other brands out there this was just a cheap
one we got to try. It has a digital display and you can adjust the
temp in 20 degree increments and power in 100 watt increments
and time in minutes up to 8 hour. Finer adjustments would be
handy as 120 F is warm enough to drink out of the pot but 140
will singe your lips. Like Holybus mentioned a steel plate set on
it will allow use of nonmagnetic utensils.
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Old 03-24-2015, 09:41 PM   #69
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I bought the Nuwave Pro even though I knew ahead of time that my very expensive Calphalon pots wouldn't work. I started looking on ebay but ended up buying a 12 piece set (6 pots & pans 6 lids) from Walmart on line.

I ended up getting transfered to one of their market stores,
Wayfair and bought the set for around $50.00 s&h free. It was delivered to my home within two days. I chose them because all but two have the helper handles and not the long handle so I can take it from cooktop to table.

The brand is Cook-n-home and work fabulous on my burner and also fit perfectly in my Nuwave oven too.

Before I gave up mu old set I looked into the discs and the reviews on most of the ones I checked into weren't favorable.
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Old 03-25-2015, 11:44 AM   #70
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The part I don't get is why it is not a top loader. With the door on the front, all the cool air falls out.
While that IS true... the effect can be mitigated to a degree by keeping the fridge (or freezer) as full as possible, even if only with old milk jugs filled with water. Warm room air can quickly trade places with the cold refrigerated air when the door is opened but room heat won't transfer so quickly into actual "stuff" like water. Depending on a person's energy budget it might be "good enough" to have a front-opening fridge/freezer, mostly filled to limit the amount of air contained inside, and accept the remaining inefficiency penalty vs the top-load in order to have the front-load convenience.
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Old 03-25-2015, 03:21 PM   #71
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While that IS true... the effect can be mitigated to a degree by keeping the fridge (or freezer) as full as possible, even if only with old milk jugs filled with water. Warm room air can quickly trade places with the cold refrigerated air when the door is opened but room heat won't transfer so quickly into actual "stuff" like water. Depending on a person's energy budget it might be "good enough" to have a front-opening fridge/freezer, mostly filled to limit the amount of air contained inside, and accept the remaining inefficiency penalty vs the top-load in order to have the front-load convenience.
Also... if you don't want to go with a top-loader (see my link above) you can hang plastic strips inside (about 4" wide overlapping strips cut from 10mil or thicker plastic - relatively cheap) or set up an "air dam" out of a piece of plexiglas. You'll see things like this in delis that can't do a full chest fridge/freezer but still don't want to lose their air.

Opening your fridge as little as possible when you're off-grid helps a lot, too. We carry a large cooler with us on every trip and keep our water and such in there. A bag of ice in it will last a couple of days, and keeps the kids out of the fridge. When we do go into the fridge, it's to load the cooler...
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Old 03-25-2015, 04:43 PM   #72
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We carry a large cooler with us on every trip and keep our water and such in there. A bag of ice in it will last a couple of days, and keeps the kids out of the fridge. When we do go into the fridge, it's to load the cooler...
Children are a big factor in my decisions as it sounds like they are in yours. I had been thinking "kids can't easily get into it" is on the cons side of the balance sheet for the chest fridge/freezer... but now I'm wondering whether really it goes on the pros side. Your cooler idea for minimizing trips to the fridge is pretty good.

Related to that, I've been reflecting on my experience two years ago. We did a 10 day trip with a large conventional fridge+freezer; it was powered through an inverter from a pair of used (probably tired) T-105 batteries. I think I had to run a generator about 2 hours each day to keep the batteries up with a 40 amp charger. That was too much. Long-term I think I'll use a small-ish residential fridge+freezer, and for the occasions when we need extra cold space (a long trip where grocery shopping would be inconvenient, and/or have extended family along like we did on that trip) I may fill the freezer section with ice blocks and the fridge with the most delicate perishables, and put the more forgiving refrigerated things into coolers. Ice blocks could be moved from the freezer to the coolers as needed to maintain them.
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Old 03-31-2015, 04:24 PM   #73
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I have a question, Everything household is engineered for the most part at 120/220 volts at 60hertz, what if you hooked up electrical generator that ran at 400hz , what happens to the appliances or chargers?
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Old 03-31-2015, 04:37 PM   #74
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I have a question, Everything household is engineered for the most part at 120/220 volts at 60hertz, what if you hooked up electrical generator that ran at 400hz , what happens to the appliances or chargers?
The short answer is: "Nothing good."
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Old 03-31-2015, 04:48 PM   #75
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The short answer is: "Nothing good."
Your still putting out 120/220 volts just a more pure power
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Old 03-31-2015, 05:15 PM   #76
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Your still putting out 120/220 volts just a more pure power
I would guess that all transformers would operate correctly. So your laptop, LCD tv, stereo, etc would probably work (though they may "buzz"). Motor-driven appliances, however, probably wouldn't work and might actually fry.. AC motors rely on the sine wave to operate and, in North America, are configured for 60Hz.
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Old 03-31-2015, 05:18 PM   #77
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I would guess that all transformers would operate correctly. So your laptop, LCD tv, stereo, etc would probably work (though they may "buzz").

Actually, even transformer driven appliances will probably suffer. AC is Alternating Current, after all, so if you continue to increase the AC frequency towards infinity you will eventually approach zero volts.
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Old 03-31-2015, 06:08 PM   #78
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A lot of devices will work. (The Macbook Air charger is known to work at 400Hz, for example.) The ones that work will be inefficient. The ones that don't work will fry. You won't know for sure which those are until you let the "magic smoke" out, and once you let the magic smoke out you can't put it back in, and the device is dead forever.

So...
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Old 03-31-2015, 06:26 PM   #79
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Did you want the electrical engineering version, or the layman version? "It depends."

The first thing most switch-mode power supplies do is rectify and filter the mains ac into dc. A mains voltage of 120 Vrms ac rectifies to 170 V dc but it's not smooth at all. Big capacitors (relative to the load) smooth it somewhat, then an electronic circuit creates from that a high frequency switching signal into a transformer. This is the main feature that allows switch-mode supplies to be so small and light weight: they still have a transformer (or sometimes an inductor) but it can be much smaller because it's more efficient at higher frequencies.

So anyway.. a switch-mode type supply might get along (probably would?) with 400 Hz input but if it isn't marked for that then all you're left with is to test with the possibility that it'll fail, and perhaps spectacularly. There are still a few electronic items that don't use a swich-mode supply, but chargers, computers, monitors, etc almost universally do use this topology.

Heavier devices -- things with mains-driven motors or line-frequency transformers -- are almost certain to misbehave. Motors might refuse to start, they might overspeed... I don't know exactly; motors aren't my specialty but I do know that for some types the starting arrangements and the running speed are related to the line frequency.

One other curious little thing: if you still have a line-powered clock radio, it might keep time wrong. Some of them were built so cheaply that they didn't have any built-in timekeeping; instead they simply counted the 60 Hz cycles on the mains. If you fed it 400 Hz instead, and if it powered and ran, it might run 6.7x fast. That'll make time really fly!
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Old 03-31-2015, 06:42 PM   #80
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Would there be a way of stepping it down to 60 hertz?
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