Cool Room instead of Pantry/Fridge

I have been wanting to do this for ages - I am just waiting for a client who can get their head around the concept.

I remeber being out at some auctions a while ago and they had 3m x 3m coolrooms with compressors for about the same price as some of the big name 1000mm wide fridges.

Because of their size I think the idea would be ideally suited to cantilevering one off the side of a house (or sticking it onto the side of a house if working at ground level) and simply having the sliding door walk in access through the wall.

Structurally they are basically just thick wall slabs of extruded polystyrene with a cladding (aluminium?), and there would be no real drama in putting one up.
The floor would need to be waterproof with appropriate drainage - good thermal properties would help here as well.

The main issues I can perceive here are energy consumption and the noise of an externally mounted compressor.

With the noise issue I am pretty sure some judicious sound proofing could be quite easily fabricated.

As for economy, if the system is well sealed and the door isn't being opened every five minutes they might well suprise some people.
Obviously it would be an advantage to have the structure well sheltered to avoid sun, but I would imagine that one would want to create some decorative shroud for the thing anyway.

Cheers,

Earl

There was a company in the UK that made coolrooms where you would normally put a corner pantry. Can't think of the name though. Doh!

What state are you in LMGU?

The issue with coolig your whole pantry is - why not just buy a bigger fridge?

Not everything needs cooling in OZ. And if everything in your pantry is cold - then you need to uyse more energy to heat it up - if you want to eat it hot.

A electricaly cooled pantry - just doesn''t make sense in my opinion.
Sure during summer it is useful - but the rest of the year?

Steve

Precisely the thing Helen.

The air needs to come from under the house or via a long preferably deeply dug pipe running under ground to get the natural cooling effect. But it does work.
Steve

I'd be worried about a child getting stuck in a walk in fridge....

The best way to keep cooling costs down is to fill any fridge or freezer as full as possible because it really is the air that you are cooling - less air - less cooling costs. Do you have enough food/slabs of beer to fill a pantry?

We have two fridges and a chest freezer so we too are burning up energy...

Mine would drink all the juice and eat all the "unasseptable" food!

Thanks Steve. It's pretty exciting to see it all come together the way we imagined. Six yrs since we bought the block so it's been a while.

And yes - we have the main living area with kitchen facing north and bedrooms to the south. We'll have to see about the winter sun. Because we get hot summers we have verandas all the way around so this may impede the sun a bit in winter. But we have a slab with slate tiles to soak up what does come in. And we'll use a combustion stove for hot water so that heat should be absorbed by our brick (besser) walls and slab and be released at night when it cools down. We'll monitor the sun and the north veranda and may make some adjustments. We've also put in a worm farm for all the waste and have become slightly obsessed with our worms!

H

Thanks for the tip. I was wondering about that but there's nothing in the instructions to say we can't put them in.

Here's the site if you're interested. And the can be retrofitted.
http://www.wormfarm.com.au/index.php

Wicked sense of humour Helyn - with a Y

Steve

You're both as wicked as each other