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Old 04-18-2019, 09:25 PM
 
Location: Backwoods of Maine
7,485 posts, read 10,443,442 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by 6.7traveler View Post
Nor'eastah, how does your propane Honda inverter run in the winter time? I've thought about converting my old one over to propane. Any problems with the propane being too cold to flow?
The 2 Hondas that run off propane will also still run on gas. You can buy a conversion kit for propane. Ours run fine all winter, but I suspect that is because we run them so frequently all year round, and also being religious about maintenance. You don't need to baby those machines.

I connect them to 30 lb RV tanks - just a bit bigger than a grill tank. I store the tanks in our pole barn, which is often semi-heated in winter because I am out there putzing around so much. Thus the tanks don't sit outside all the time. No flow problems as of yet.

Have you tried adding egg crate foam to your genset enclosure? That might help lower the sound volume. I made a couple of little generator houses to keep the rain and snow off our machines, and added the foam to one of them; didn't get around to other one yet. The foam helps.
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Old 04-18-2019, 09:46 PM
 
Location: Backwoods of Maine
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tn_eddy View Post
So how much is 'far less' and how are you measuring it ?


We replaced a 22cf side-by-side of mid 90's vintage that used 1200kwhrs/yr with an energy star 25cf bottom freezer, double top door model a few years back that uses 650kwhrs/yr....that is less than 2kwhrs/day. (Those numbers from the 'yellow' tags)



Newer models DO use more insulation, and foam insulation instead of fiberglass, the compressors are more efficient, and the interior lighting is LED.
I measured it with a Kill-A-Watt device you can get at HD for about 10 bucks. Very useful if you are trying to keep tabs on energy usage or going off grid. I honestly don't know how anyone can figure their total draw without one. The yellow energy stickers are just a guide while the appliance is new, so you may approach that if everything is right. But I find it not to be very accurate.

2 kwh (2,000 watt hours) per day is a lot of power draw if you are off grid. My upright freezer on an external thermometer uses about a fifth of that. While I don't doubt that the newer fridges are way more efficient than the older ones, they all have thinner walls than a freezer, and virtually all of them have the self defrost feature, which gobbles up a lot of energy. I doubt if the light being LED or incandescent makes much of a difference, unless you leave the door open for 10 minutes deciding on what's for dinner.
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Old 04-19-2019, 04:17 PM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by terracore View Post
and all the cold doesn't "fall out" every time the door is opened.

You can help prevent this by filling unused space with empty milk jugs or other containers , just make sure you don't pack it like a sardine can and leave room for circulation.

Last edited by thecoalman; 04-19-2019 at 04:42 PM..
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Old 04-19-2019, 07:31 PM
 
Location: Puna, Hawaii
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What is the point of adding salt to the ice jugs? I understand that salt lowers the freezing temperature of water, but it also increases the thawing temperature of frozen water. -8 degree ice is -8 degrees regardless of whether or not there is salt in it. The difference in thermal volume would only be relevant if your salt water never froze, and then only by comparing the volume of frozen water to liquid water, I would think you'd need an olympic size swimming pool's worth for it to be relevant.
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Old 04-20-2019, 01:58 AM
 
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Quote:
Originally Posted by terracore View Post
What is the point of adding salt to the ice jugs? I understand that salt lowers the freezing temperature of water, but it also DECREASES the thawing temperature of frozen water. -8 degree ice is -8 degrees regardless of whether or not there is salt in it. The difference in thermal volume would only be relevant if your salt water never froze, and then only by comparing the volume of frozen water to liquid water, I would think you'd need an olympic size swimming pool's worth for it to be relevant.
Fixed it. The point is that by lowering the temperature at which the phase change from solid to liquid occurs, the larger amount of "coolth" energy is available to keep things cool at the lower temperature.

Just as water heats up at a fairly linear rate in a teakettle until it gets to boiling, and then takes a HUGE amount of energy to change phase into a vapor, ice cools or heats with little energy requirement until it reaches melting point.

Having a "hunk" of energy in a system that will keep foods frozen BELOW 20 degrees F +- is a good thing. Plain ice would work fine for storing it in a freezer and then using it in an old style ice box for temporary refrigeration.

(IIRC, the amount of energy for phase change decreases if you adulterate water ice with salt {because of varying salt concentrations during phase change}, but the benefits are still enough to make it a decent strategy - provided you have other sources of drinking water.)
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Old 04-20-2019, 03:28 AM
 
41,815 posts, read 50,843,804 times
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In other words it just lowers the rate at which it will absorb heat? Wish I knew that 25 years ago when we went on canoeing trips, we used to do 8 days. Food cooler had single frozen milk jug and all the food was frozen, we always kept it covered with blanket and shade if possible etc. Food was carefully packed so you could open and close it quickly and we kept a piece plastic over everything inside. That always lasted until the end, the beer cooler not so much....


Maybe you can explain this, my cousin has one of those Yeti coolers with the "ice" pack. I put half a bag of cubed ice in it and throughout the day I was opening and closing it (must open cooler to get beer) and it got to that point where it was half ice and water. The next morning it was froze solid.... If someone told me this I would of said they were full of **** but I saw it with my own eyes. My only guess was whatever they were using for the "ice" could store a large amount of heat by volume.
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Old 04-20-2019, 02:16 PM
 
23,548 posts, read 70,029,022 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by thecoalman View Post
In other words it just lowers the rate at which it will absorb heat? Wish I knew that 25 years ago when we went on canoeing trips, we used to do 8 days. Food cooler had single frozen milk jug and all the food was frozen, we always kept it covered with blanket and shade if possible etc. Food was carefully packed so you could open and close it quickly and we kept a piece plastic over everything inside. That always lasted until the end, the beer cooler not so much....


Maybe you can explain this, my cousin has one of those Yeti coolers with the "ice" pack. I put half a bag of cubed ice in it and throughout the day I was opening and closing it (must open cooler to get beer) and it got to that point where it was half ice and water. The next morning it was froze solid.... If someone told me this I would of said they were full of **** but I saw it with my own eyes. My only guess was whatever they were using for the "ice" could store a large amount of heat by volume.
I think that the capability of the ice to remove heat remains about the same overall. Have a pound of ice and a pound of ice with rock salt as part of it, both at -10 F and then allow both to get to 70 F and similar amounts of heat will be absorbed. The difference is that most of the heat absorption will occur at 32 F in the plain ice, and at a lower temp in the salt ice mix. Calcium chloride (damp rid) acts a little differently. When it hits water, there is a significant heating of the water (exothermic reaction). I'm not certain how phase change would happen with it.

My guess on the beer is that the cooling of the beer melted part of the cube ice, but the ice pack in the Yeti was partly insulated from having to do that work. Once the beer was removed and lid closed, the temperatures of everything in the cooler "wanted" to equalize out. The remaining ice cubes that were below 32 F in temp warmed up, and the ice water, which by definition is just above 32 F in an ice/water mix, began to solidify back into ice, aided by the ice pack in the Yeti.

There are compounds that phase change at higher temps as well. The "cool vests" used under costumes at Disney and in industry phase change around 40 or 50 F to keep the wearer from getting frostbite.

Again, it has been a long time, but IIRC, water is amazing compared to other compounds in the way it handles heat. It literally is ideal for most aspects of life.
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Old 04-20-2019, 05:34 PM
 
Location: Puna, Hawaii
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I did about 10 minutes of internet sleuthing, and there is no definitive answer I could find, one theory posits that pure water absorbs (very slightly) more heat to thaw, meaning it would be the winner over salt water. Other theories are mainly centered around the cooler concept where you are taking water that is frozen in one container (environment), and then putting them into another, and that is the end of the thermal cycle. Others are based solely on referring to items that are contained within the water/salt water, whereas in the bottle example everything that is chilled is outside the water.


Of all the stuff I read, nothing said the that either salt or regular water had an advantage when bottled in the closed-cycle of a freezer.


So from what I can tell, any benefit of using salt water, if there is one, would only be applicable to the very first time it was used.


https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/...r_help_keep_a/
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Old 04-22-2019, 10:00 AM
 
Location: SE corner of the Ozark Redoubt
8,658 posts, read 4,472,543 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by thecoalman View Post
...

Maybe you can explain this, my cousin has one of those Yeti coolers with the "ice" pack. I put half a bag of cubed ice in it and throughout the day I was opening and closing it (must open cooler to get beer) and it got to that point where it was half ice and water. The next morning it was froze solid.... If someone told me this I would of said they were full of **** but I saw it with my own eyes. My only guess was whatever they were using for the "ice" could store a large amount of heat by volume.
Not sure about heat "per volume," but most of those "ice" packs use a solution that freezes and thaws somewhere between 10 and 20 F (-12 and -7 C ) so if it was still froze that night it could have absorbed enough heat overnight to refreeze things.
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Old 04-22-2019, 12:38 PM
 
Location: Back and Beyond
2,993 posts, read 4,273,645 times
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If you really want to make the ice melt slower and last longer, make "pykrete". It's supposed to melt at a much slower rate than regular ice.

To make it you mix in 14% sawdust, woodchips or straw in the the water mixture before it's frozen. It also makes the ice stronger. They floated the idea of making an entire aircraft carrier out of pykrete in ww2 but it never happened. Today they use it to spray domes and have built one with a 30 meter span Pykrete Dome
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