Doggydogworld
Solar Enthusiast
- Joined
- Aug 29, 2022
- Messages
- 370
That's just an estimate, of course. Your mileage will vary. Maybe by a lot.Weird. Using another calculator it says 850 btuh is all that's needed for a 16cuf box. *sigh*
Larger fridges generally use less BTU per cu ft thanks to scaling math. Doubling the length, width and height doubles the door seal length thus doubles warm air infiltration. It quadruples wall surface area through which heat transfers. So you've got 2x of one type of heating and 4x of another. And it's often more like 3x through the walls because larger fridges tend to have thicker/better wall insulation. Meanwhile, that 2-3x higher BTU/hr buys you 8x as many cubic feet!
The other big variables are temperatures inside vs. outside the fridge and how often you put warm items in. Keep the fridge in a cool room (e.g. basement). Vent warm air coming off the (clean) coils up and away from the fridge. Add insulation to the outside walls. Keep it as full as possible while still allowing air to circulate inside, and return food/milk/etc. quickly before it has time to warm up. Push these measures to extremes and that little DC compressor might even run a full size fridge.