A lot of people have an additional refrigerator in their garage. It’s definitely a huge advantage as you can save a lot of money when buying in bulk. Or maybe it’s simply just handy. Imagine if you were doing some garden work in hot summer and didn’t have to pop into your kitchen for a cold drink as it’d come straight from your garage fridge. But does a garage ready refrigerator really save you money? Is it an expensive addition to your household? Let’s find out more about the average costs and check this site to find your perfect model.
Bad Habits Die Slowly
Most people who want to have a garage fridge simply move their old one from the kitchen to the garage. It seems like quite a logical thing to do. After all, as long as your old fridge from the kitchen works, why should you do away with it?
If you don’t replace your fridge from the kitchen with a newer model, you could certainly think of buying a used fridge for your garage. It’s the garage and not your kitchen. Hence, a fridge in the garage doesn’t need a lot of features and a simple old one is sufficient.
While these are understandable considerations, there are some points to think about. And they’ve all got to do with energy bills.
Old fridges may die hard, but…
Back in the day, it was rather common to build appliances to last. You could use washing machines for decades and it was rather easy to repair them if they broke down. Radios would also last forever and thus, they’re still in use today.
If you take good care of your refrigerator, you’ll enjoy it for years to come. However, the older an appliance is, the more thirsty it is for power. Recent models are more energy-efficient and will cost you less.
Kitchen fridges are not well insulated
Your kitchen is usually kept at a rather moderate temperature, which can vary somewhere between 60 and 85 degrees. After all, your kitchen is in your house and your house is insulated. The garage, on the other hand, is usually not. That means that your fridge will have to put up with a much harsher climate in the garage than in your kitchen. And it usually doesn’t result in the best perspective:
The garage can become insanely hot
The hotter it is in the environment of your fridge, the more power it needs to keep its cool temperatures. A fridge does not usually power up all the time, it has sensors that react to temperatures to the outside as well as on the inside. If it notices that the temperatures rise on the inside and it’s hot on the outside, it will draw more power. You could compare it to a motor that has to run on high velocities over a prolonged time.
Naturally, your utility bill is going to rise. Neither will your kitchen fridge be able to put up with such high temperatures in the long run. It won’t harm the fridge too much in the beginning, but it will break down if you use it in an environment it’s not built for. In the end, you are not only left with high power bills, but also high repair costs.
The garage can become incredibly cold
The same principle of a kitchen fridge in a garage during the warm season applies to it during cold spells. If it freezes outside, your kitchen fridge may not require more power. It’s likely to stop its operation as it thinks it’s cold enough. This leads to your fridge shutting down and your contents can freeze just because of such low temperatures. If it’s got a freezer section, your food will thaw.
Energy Efficiency Is Key
As you can already assume, it is of utmost importance that your fridge is energy-efficient. A typical fridge for the kitchen won’t do the job yet alone for its lack of better insulation. So what could you do? You actually do have two options:
- There are kits to turn your kitchen fridge into a garage ready refrigerator. Some people also install it in a super-insulated cabinet. The downside is only that if you’re using an old fridge, you may benefit from better insulation, but it’ll still require more power for being older.
- Buy a garage ready refrigerator. There are different types of refrigerators for particular purposes. A kitchen fridge is built to be used in a kitchen, an outdoor fridge is made to be weatherproof to use outdoors when camping in summer. And then there are garage ready refrigerators with better insulation and better sensors to operate smoothly despite extreme temperature fluctuations.
So How Much Does It Cost to Run a Garage Ready Refrigerator?
If you’re looking for a garage ready refrigerator, make sure it’s at the top of its league in regards to energy efficiency. Though it’s got better insulation and more sophisticated sensors, its energy efficiency also rises with each new model.
On average, you can expect about $ 5 for your power bill to run a garage ready refrigerator per month. That’s not much at all. In comparison, you’ll pay about double for an old fridge you’re repurposing for your garage – not yet including repair costs, which you will doubtlessly face.
Parting Words
For more detailed information, you should check how many kilowatt-hours a garage ready refrigerator uses. You can find this info in each technical detail of online shops that sell such models. The kilowatt-hours indicate its average annual use. The lower the values are, the less power it’ll need. Once you’ve got the kilowatt-hours, you can use these to calculate the utility costs with the prices given by your power supplier.
Additionally, look out for yellow ‘Energy Guide’ stickers on your garage fridge. Each manufacturer is required to attach one of these stickers to each appliance they sell.
