Journal mcgrew's Journal: Where's my fridge?? 24
I plan to buy a house next spring, so I'll almost certainly need a new refrigerator. There's a problem: they don't make the fridge I want, and never have. I can't figure out why.
Refrigerators today are quite different than antique ones, using a different coolent because of the ozone layer, better insulation, the use of rare earth magnets in the motors, and other improvements.
But they're still incredibly wasteful.
The fridge I want has two vents outside, much like dryer vents but insulated. There is an electronic outside thermometer, one in the refrigerator, and one inside the freezer.
When the temperature outside is above seventy fareignheight, the heat taken from the fridge is vented outside, so the air conditioner doesn't have to work harder to cool the hot air refrigerators let out inside the house.
Under seventy the air is vented into, rather than outside, the house. If the heat is on, it doesn't work as hard.
But most of all is winter. It's ludicrous that we pump the heat from our freezers with a lot of energy expenditure, while freezing air is right outside that could come in the intake hose and freeze and cool your food. At freezing, this fridge doesn't need the compressor at all and compressors take a lot of energy to operate.
I don't know why nobody is selling those things.
Sounds very complicated. (Score:1)
Just try to find one with the compressor on top. I hear 12 volt fridges are supposed to be real cheap to operate. And it can't hurt to look into Stirling [wikipedia.org].
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how about a window in your pantry? open partially, pantry cold. open fully, pantry very cold.
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There was an antique fridge from the 1920s at a drive-in theater I worked for in my teens. Its compressor was on top.
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When you were a teen, stuff from the 1920s wasn't antique.
Long time no see. How are you?
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Sorry I haven't been around much. Since I retired I've been concentrating on writing and haven't been to slashdot much.
A lamp my grandmother gave me will be an antique in fifteen years. Sad that antique literature is still under copyright.
It's a trap! Don't do it! (Score:2)
You can buy a lot of drugs for $30k, and it would be a vastly better decision.
The reason why people still buy houses is in no small part fuelled by the PR networks that the realtors have on cable TV (and there are
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Houses in my neighborhood are selling for 3 times as much as I bought mine for 15 years ago. And that's before you consider that the pre-tax money I've spent on mortgage interest in that 15 years is vastly lower than what I'd have spent on rent.
It's actually rather hard to lose money on a house purchase. You kinda have to be a financial numbskull.
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Unless those 8 years were 2007-2015, you did something wrong. Like paying more than it was worth up front, failing to adequately investigate planned changes to the neighborhood or staying only 8 years of a 30 year loan (30 year loans are scams for the first 10 years -- very little of the payment goes to principal until you're under 20 years and since payments to principal are essentially payments to yourself, you have to consider them gains of ownership).
If you bought in '99 and sold in 2007, you doubled yo
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Unless those 8 years were 2007-2015,
It was actually slightly sooner than those years, but generally close.
Like paying more than it was worth up front
What we paid when we bought was deemed appropriate based on the going prices of the most similar homes in the area.
failing to adequately investigate planned changes to the neighborhood
There were no planned changes to the neighborhood while we were there. The only significant unplanned change to the neighborhood was the financial failure of a local cattle farm, which then sat dormant the rest of the time we were there. Obviously that is not a neighborhood change in the sense of government induced but i
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So basically you:
A) bought near the top of a housing bubble (which only escaped your notice if you were willfully blind to how badly overbought the market was)
B) bought at or past the border between suburban and rural where any kind of downturn would hit first and recover last (which can't have escaped your notice if there was a dairy farm in the neighborhood)
C) stayed only in for the part of the loan where the overwhelming majority of the mortgage payment was interest. You gained almost no equity from the
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bought near the top of a housing bubble
Except there was no housing bubble in that area. What we paid was scarcely more than what that same house sold for 15-20 year earlier.
bought at or past the border between suburban and rural where any kind of downturn would hit first and recover last
First of all, where we were, that was considered "suburban" as the nearest "city" (within 100 miles) was less than 150k people; we were less than 10 miles from it.
Second, a dairy farm (which was not near us) and a cattle farm (which was) are two very different operations.
stayed only in for the part of the loan where the overwhelming majority of the mortgage payment was interest. You gained almost no equity from the mortgage payment just as if you'd paid rent.
As I said, I do not count that in as part of our losses. You can challenge the validity of that rat
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If there's any kind of farm in the neighborhood (aside from the gardening stores which refer to themselves as farms) then the closest you are to the city is the far edge of the suburban strip. Farms can't afford to operate on normal suburban land prices or pay the requisite property taxes. When suburbia expands, farms close and sell to developers.
Except there was no housing bubble in that area. What we paid was scarcely more than what that same house sold for 15-20 year earlier.
That wasn't a red flag for you? That at the same time other locations were doubling in value, the neighborhood you were considering was flat?
Yet they go for the 30 year mortgage because they can't afford the payment of a 20 year on the same house.
There's a word for tho
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When suburbia expands, farms close and sell to developers.
Only if developers want to develop there. Not every city will expand dramatically past where it has historically been. The area we lived in - specifically the "city" that it is centered around - has not had positive population change in the census since pre-WWII. The cattle farm folded for financial reasons (and, according to locals, family reasons as well - after all, farming is a business). Last time I was out there, the lot was just simply empty while the family quarrelled over what to do next.
That wasn't a red flag for you? That at the same time other locations were doubling in value, the neighborhood you were considering was flat?
Why
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Are you trolling me at this point, or are you really that intent on remaining wilfully ignorant of how real estate works?
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wilfully ignorant of how real estate works?
So asks the one who seems to believe that their own real estate market is a perfect stand-in for every market in the nation?
I'll accept that you don't like 30 year mortgages; there are certainly valid criticisms of them. However much of the rest of your argument - and the overwhelming majority of your claim of my being "ignorant" - is based on some huge assumptions you are making about the market in which my house was in. You can opt to not believe anything I say if you so wish, but that won't make y
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He just bought in the wrong neighborhood, probably trying to make a quick easy buck. Like you said, not very smart, but if you're a real estate agent, he's probably an easy mark for a "fixer-upper" that needs just a little TLC.
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I plan on dying in whatever house I buy (hopefully a very long time from now), so resale value is of no importance to me. I just don't want to have to deal with a landlord. You can't do any renovations on a rented house, and you're paying the landlord, his property taxes, and loan interest. He can evict you, sell the house to someone else.
I hate moving, I only want one more move.
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so resale value is of no importance to me
I'm glad to see that you at least enter with that philosophy. Far too many people have bought into the realtor propaganda networks on TV (and there are several of them on cable now) and have convinced themselves that there is money to be made in real estate as a buyer and seller.
You can't do any renovations on a rented house, and you're paying the landlord, his property taxes, and loan interest
On the other hand, if something intrinsic to the house is broken, it is not for you to worry about. Renovations almost never pay off financially any more - hence they should be done because hte homeowner wants to do them, not be
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If something is broken I do have to worry about it, because if the landlord's costs go up, your rent goes up. The renter bears all the costs of ownership plus profit. Even after the inevitable repairs and taxes, owning is cheaper than renting. I've both owned and rented,
And yes, a homeowner can lose his house, I lost both of mine. The first was because the ex cleaned me out before she left, and the bank swindled me out of the second. The Illinois AG sued them and they paid me $1200 for stealing my house. An
vent (Score:2)
Your fridge is smarter than you think. The hot air is vented under the fridge over the drain pain from the defroster. This evaporates the condensate water so you don't need a drain and won't have accidents causing water damage.
Besides, there's no free ventilation. If you dump the hot air outside when it's hot outside, an equivalent amount of hot air from outside has to be pulled in to your house from somewhere to maintain the local air pressure.
Convert a Chest Freezer (Score:2)
If you want efficient, then convert a chest freezer into a refrigerator.
http://newlifeonahomestead.com/convert-chest-freezer-to-fridge-solar/ [newlifeonahomestead.com]
Better in the winter (Score:2)