Homeowner Forum / Construction / January 2006

   It stands to reason that if the area directly adjacent to the
fridge is warmer, it will take more energy to keep things cool.  It
seems doubtful though that this is the sole cause of your higher bills.
Days are shorter in Jan than Sep, so you're burning lights more often.
Then you have those Christmas lights you mentioned.  It all adds up.
It could also be that the local utility charges more per Kw/Hr during
the winter months or more after you go over a certain threshold level
of use.  And of course there could be other factors at play as well if
you think things through carefully.

    This being said, in theory an insulated floor under the fridge
seems like a good idea.  When I designed the radiant heating system for
our house, I was forced to run lines under my refrigerator area,
because the only closet available to locate the floor manifold was
directly adjacent.  This actually meant that not only are there lines
under the fridge, but the lines are on a tighter spacing that normal
because they're just starting to fan out to the four loops serviced by
this manifold.  Knowing this could be a problem, I wrapped the pex
lines with pipe insulation until they were 3-4 feet from the fridge
area.  Even with this insualtion in place, we still had room for ~2in
of concrete above.  This seems to have worked fairly well.  When this
zone is going, the floor area past the insulation is warm to the touch,
while the area under the fridge stays noticably cooler.

   The problem in your case is the pain involved with trying to
insulate the floor after the fact.  It doesn't seem very practical at
this point.  You might mitigate the problem by investing in a
refrigerator with a top mounted condensor (like a Sub Zero or Jenn Air
built-in)  This would get the mechanicals up and away from the heat
source.  The problem is these monsters already use more energy due to
their size.  And the huge up-front cost would never be recouped through
energy savings alone.  Better start tuning of the lights when you leave
the room ;~)

Richard Johnson PE
Camano Island, WA

   It stands to reason that if the area directly adjacent to the
fridge is warmer, it will take more energy to keep things cool.  It
seems doubtful though that this is the sole cause of your higher bills.
Days are shorter in Jan than Sep, so you're burning lights more often.
Then you have those Christmas lights you mentioned.  It all adds up.
It could also be that the local utility charges more per Kw/Hr during
the winter months or more after you go over a certain threshold level
of use.  And of course there could be other factors at play as well if
you think things through carefully.

    This being said, in theory an insulated floor under the fridge
seems like a good idea.  When I designed the radiant heating system for
our house, I was forced to run lines under my refrigerator area,
because the only closet available to locate the floor manifold was
directly adjacent.  This actually meant that not only are there lines
under the fridge, but the lines are on a tighter spacing that normal
because they're just starting to fan out to the four loops serviced by
this manifold.  Knowing this could be a problem, I wrapped the pex
lines with pipe insulation until they were 3-4 feet from the fridge
area.  Even with this insualtion in place, we still had room for ~2in
of concrete above.  This seems to have worked fairly well.  When this
zone is going, the floor area past the insulation is warm to the touch,
while the area under the fridge stays noticably cooler.

   The problem in your case is the pain involved with trying to
insulate the floor after the fact.  It doesn't seem very practical at
this point.  You might mitigate the problem by investing in a
refrigerator with a top mounted condensor (like a Sub Zero or Jenn Air
built-in)  This would get the mechanicals up and away from the heat
source.  The problem is these monsters already use more energy due to
their size.  And the huge up-front cost would never be recouped through
energy savings alone.  Better start tuning of the lights when you leave
the room ;~)

Richard Johnson PE
Camano Island, WA

It would take a few months to find out, but you could pick up a "watts
up" meeter (google) and install it on your fridge monitoring the
consumption to see how it varies from month to month. It would be the
only way to see if the fridge is the culprit.

Mark

Barold -

It is almost certainly NOT the radiant floor heating/fridge effect that is
causing such a significant increase in your electrical bills.

If your local electric supply rates have increased, as you imply, that is
part of the cause of your increased electrical bills.

The balance of the increase in your bills almost certainly IS increased
heating and lighting demands which typically occur during fall and winter.
Could be your floor heating system running more often for longer periods of
time (there are electrical components to this system even if it is
gas/oil/propane heated hot water), general lighting loads which increase in
fall/winter, some source of electric load you may not have noted (snow
melting cables in your driveway? pipe tracing on your water lines? heat
tracing on your roof edge? garage heating? electric snow blower?).

Almost all newer fridges are super insulated to keep cold air in, with the
result that they are also (flip side of same coin) super insulated to keep
hot air out. Do not waste time and money trying to fix a problem that is at
best very, very minor.

Regards,

Doug