Refrigerators consume the most electricity among all kitchen appliances. They make your life easy by keeping food preserved, cold, and fresh. In recent years, refrigerator technology has evolved by leaps and bounds to provide several significant features, including smart home options! While your home’s hardest working kitchen appliance gets regular upgrades, its energy consumption rate also rises.
Consequently, if you don’t cut your double door refrigerator some slack, it can be pretty heavy on your wallet and the environment. It will improve your finances by making your double-door refrigerator more energy efficient. Today, we will help you do just that with our list of 11 things that can help lighten the load on your double-door refrigerator. Help it work smarter, not harder!
1. Focus on where you install the appliance
You can make your double door refrigerator more energy efficient by paying attention to where you install the appliance. As a thumb rule, ensure you give your refrigerator some breathing room and a cold spot so it doesn’t have to work as hard maintaining a stable temperature.
Consequently, ensure it’s not installed in proximity to the stove, oven, or other heat sources. As such, this includes direct sunlight as well, so it would be wise to keep it away from any windows. Heat sources can mess with the surrounding air, making constant temperature changes that affect the air inside the refrigerator every time you open its doors.
Elevated room temperature also increases the load on the fridge since it will need to work more to bring the temperature down. Your appliance will use roughly 2 to 2.5% more energy for every degree over the average room temperature.
Similarly, you need to ensure the appliance has at least 3-4 inches of free space on all its sides to ensure adequate ventilation. The double door refrigerator needs to release the heat generated by its compressor; otherwise, the appliance can heat up. When your fridge heats up, it uses more energy to maintain the internal temperature at constant levels.
2. Invest in an energy-efficient double door refrigerator
Since technology is constantly improving, many large-scale manufacturers have introduced energy-efficient models in the market. To state the obvious, these newer models require less energy for optimal functioning. Here’s a little comparative analysis to put things into perspective: it costs roughly twice as much to operate a 5-year-old refrigerator model compared to a newly released one.
Therefore, if you have an aging double-door refrigerator, it might be time to upgrade to a newer, more energy-efficient model. Think about your kitchen requirements when choosing one. You need to consider the kitchen size and the model’s physical and technological features.
3. Keep contents organized
Keeping the refrigerator contents organized is another excellent way to boost its energy efficiency. While the organization is the cornerstone of good housekeeping, it also alleviates the strain on your kitchen appliance. It takes less time to find what you’re looking for in an organized double-door refrigerator.
Consequently, you don’t need to keep the door open for a long time, so the condenser does not need to overwork to bring the temperature back down to the set level. In turn, your refrigerator consumes less energy to bring about the desired effect.
Additionally, a well-organized refrigerator results in better food preservation! Your food will last longer if you shelf it the right way.
4. Store contents properly
Proper content storage isn’t only related to good organizational skills. You also need to focus on the actual storage. Instead of Tupperware, consider getting glass containers to store food since glass retains cold better than plastics and other polymers.
Moreover, you need never store food without a container. Food is constantly releasing moisture into the surroundings, making it difficult for your refrigerator to maintain a set temperature.
Therefore, the appliance will need to overwork itself to stabilize the temperature, consuming more energy. You can cover the stored food items and liquids to lighten the load on the refrigerator’s compressor.
5. Keep the double door refrigerator well-stocked
Here’s a tip you might not have heard before. Keeping two-thirds of your double-door refrigerator stocked with foods and liquids helps it become more energy efficient. A fuller fridge will have less volume of air to cool down. However, a near-empty fridge will have much free space, so it will have to work hard to keep the air cool.
On the other hand, a well-stocked refrigerator won’t have as much air to cool down and won’t need to work hard. The stored contents also aid the appliance in keeping the neighboring food items cool. It’s all about physics and convection currents.
Therefore, it’s also important to remember not to cram your refrigerator full of items since it’s equally important to maintain healthy airflow. If there isn’t adequate circulation, the cold air won’t be able to come into contact with all the stored items.
Similarly, ensure no items block the air vents since they’re vital to making your double door refrigerator more energy efficient.
6. Use the power saver mode
Power saving settings offer a way to ensure your refrigerator remains well-stocked. Sometimes you just don’t have enough food, and that’s okay. Newer models have countless energy-saving features to facilitate customers.
One such feature is the acclaimed power-saving mode. You might have a similar function in your fridge, labeled the vacation mode; this mode lets your refrigerator work on low energy settings since there’s not enough food to keep cool. Power saver mode exponentially reduces energy consumption and is more convenient than constantly making sure your appliance remains well-stocked.
However, suppose your refrigerator doesn’t have a power saver mode. In that case, you can use this simple hack to ensure your appliance does not overwork itself: fill up jugs of water and store them in the empty compartments to fill up space inside your refrigerator, which will help your appliance work more efficiently!
7. Never put hot food in the double door refrigerator
The warmer your food items are, the harder your refrigerator will have to work to cool them down. Hot food considerably raises air temperature, so the double-door refrigerator consumes more energy in trying to bring the temperature down to the required levels.
Consequently, you need to ensure the items reserved for storage are allowed to reach room temperature before putting them in the refrigerator. Being mindful of this aspect will help make your double-door refrigerator more energy efficient!
8. Never leave the refrigerator door open
This seems obvious, but fridge doors are often left open, especially by forgetful adults and distracted children. An open door will let the cold air out, resulting in the refrigerator having to overwork to cool the contents down again.
As such, the constant cycling between different temperatures puts an excessive load on the compressor and exacerbates energy consumption. You need to be vigilant and ensure the refrigerator door is never left open to minimize the stress on your appliance’s energy requirements!
9. Keep the condenser coils clean
Condenser coils are vital in controlling the temperature inside your refrigerator. They hold the cooling refrigerant, which moves heat outside the inner compartment and brings the temperature down. Since the coils are located in the outer unit, they can easily collect dust and grease. A dirty condenser cannot continue to function at optimal capacity, and the increased stress ups its energy consumption.
Therefore, it’s essential to clean the condenser coils of your double-door refrigerator regularly. Doing so improves energy efficiency and will also extend your appliance’s life!
10. Regularly inspect the door seals
The door seals provide a physical barrier between the cold air inside the refrigerator and the warm air outside. Any splits or cracks in the seal allow warm air to breach the barrier and enter the inner compartment. The refrigerator unit will have to overexert itself to regulate the temperature if that happens.
Consequently, you need to ensure the door seals are regularly cleaned and inspected. If you observe any damage to them, promptly replace them to alleviate the stress on your refrigerator and improve its energy efficiency.
11. Be aware of the actual temperature inside the refrigerator
Monitoring the temperature inside the compartment and the freezer is of immense importance. Sometimes the temperature you set on the thermostat does not match the temperature inside the double door refrigerator.
Therefore, you need to check the temperature inside the appliance regularly. The optimum temperature for your refrigerator lies between 35 and 38 degrees. Values above or below this threshold increase energy consumption, so it’s your job to constantly be aware of the refrigerator’s temperature.
Conclusion
There are plenty of ways to make your double-door refrigerator more energy efficient. You don’t always have to break the bank and upgrade your current model. We hope our article helped you understand that you can considerably improve your appliance’s energy efficiency by paying close attention to small details.
In a nutshell, the better you are at taking care of your double door refrigerator, the better its performance will be, so consider our 11 tips if you want to improve its energy efficiency and reap the benefits!
