Home Energy Saving Tip – Clean Your Refrigerator Coils
Refrigerator Brush
Refrigerators account for up to 8% of your electric bill. Making sure your coils are clean cuts electric consumption.
Your refrigerator works by pumping heat out of the box and into your home. When the refrigerator coils are covered with dust or cat hair (my case), the dust acts like insulation. Sometimes lots of insulation. (my case again)
Dirty Refrigerator Coils
My local hardware store sells a special refrigerator coil cleaning brush that has a unique tapered design that enables the efficient cleaning of refrigerator coils. Refrigerator coils and the fan area underneath my fridge collect dust, reducing refrigerator efficiency and wasting energy. Regularly cleaning dusty refrigerator coils can improve refrigerator efficiency by up to 30%.
Partly Cleaned Refrigerator Coils
Here is the tough math part: A 30% improvement on 8% of your electric bill is a total of .3 x 8 or 2.4%. That might not sound like much but with the average residential electric bill of $1065.00 per year (and increasing), you save about $26.00 per year.
$26.00 per year just for an hour of your time, and you get to feel like you have done just a little bit more for the planet – not bad!
data from: CS Monitor
July 28th, 2009 at 9:26 pm
Hey this is a great tip thanks, although i’m sure if i asked my local hardware shop about a ‘refrigerator coil cleaning brush’ they would look at me blankly!! Thanks again.
October 9th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
Hi – great post. I was wondering if you had a source or remembered where you saw that cleaning coils can improve refrigerator efficiency 30%?
October 19th, 2009 at 2:10 pm
Joe-
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, cleaning your refrigerator coils just once every 6 to 12 months will increase the efficiency by up to 30%. It’s as easy as 10 minutes of dusting.
Source: http://www.refrigeratorefficiency.com/efficiency-matters
Also: 2. Clean the coils with a special coil cleaning brush to loosen the dirt and dust. Vacuum the coils as you brush. Be careful not to bend the fan blades. A gentle brushing will do the job.
You can eliminate more than 70 percent of service calls with this simple cleaning step 1 and 2. Skip this chore and you’ll be contributing to your appliance repairman’s retirement fund. Not to mention handing over $5 to $10 a month extra to your utility company because the fridge isn’t running efficiently. Do it twice a year or more often if you have shedding pets. Their fur clogs up the coils fast.
From: http://bit.ly/2DYUci