Radian

Modern fridge owners, I'm intrigued: Let's say you're going to make a salad. Your tomatoes, cucumber, radishes, lettuce, celery, peppers, scallions and so on are In the Liebherr Bio fresh drawer (or Bosch etc. equivalent as they all seem to have these lower drawers with telescopic slides) So what do you do to get them all to your chopping board? Grab as much as you can in your hands and keep going back to the fridge for more? Our old Neff has a single box with open top like the picture above, that either tips open towards you or simply lifts out completely so making it easy to remove from the fridge and pick the stuff you want right next to the chopping board. I can't imagine transferring items individually from the fridge - yet it looks like the sliding drawers are only meant to be removed for occasional cleaning.

Is that Russian then?☠️

That's fantastic. I think I can see that you routed the outside edge but did you use the planer to put a shallow slope over most of the width? Can they do that?

First I talked myself out of getting one. Then I mentioned it in this thread and changed my mind then @jack mentioned the accident so I changed my mind again. But they are a useful thing. I've got 26 lengths of batten to regularise for my picnic table top and marking each one and planing by hand is not appealing.

When I first saw the photo I thought someone had fired a cat at hypersonic speed at the wall. Like you do.

7°C seems a little high to me. 8°C is supposed to be bacteria friendly so 4°C was the pre-energy crisis recommendation. Now the EU say 5°C

I don't think so, not without looking which would mean hauling it out of the cabinet. None of the spares sites list anything like that for these fridge-only tall units. I think I'm getting a better understanding of the design though. Instead of being a last-ditch safety backstop, I suspect the thermal cutout on the compressor is set relatively low. Maybe 50C or lower. The reason I suspect this is I can see it coming in at a highly variable time ranging from 5hours of continuous operation to just an hour... depending on ambient. A few extra degrees ambient can reduce time to trip by hours. When you look at the spec for fridges sold in temperate markets like the UK used to be, those rated 'N' max out at 32C ambient. They know the compressor run time will extend for higher ambient and the self heating will create positive feedback. Hence the control strategy is probably split over the thermostat and compressor cutout. This dual control may explain the wild swings I was seeing before my intervention. Last night the kitchen reached its peak temperature and a 6C setpoint was simply not achievable. I can enhance my control to include a burst limit that reflects the need for the compressor to cool off, but it's dependent on monitoring ambient (or direct sensing on the compressor). Ambient is easier. Or I could just let it hit the thermal cutout but I suspect that will produce bigger overshoot. My strawberry's were very squishy this morning. 😟

That's interesting. It's probably the closest match to our old fridge but with quite good energy efficiency. Perhaps you could answer a couple of questions: can you easily (i.e. routinely) remove the bottom salad/veg drawers and, how good is the interior illumination? I ask because to save multiple trips to open and close the doors, when preparing salad, we just pull out the salad drawer from our Neff and put it on the worktop. And in a tall fridge, a single light at the top just won't work.

This week has been a nightmare for the ailing fridge saga. At first my workaround worked but then ran into the issue with the thermal trip on the compressor kicking in after several hours of getting nowhere with the cooling. Today it was even hotter, 26C in the kitchen late afternoon and at 16:00 the cutout cut out: The brown trace is the motor power/10 so despite calling for 'coolth' (green trace) it just couldn't oblige, and tripped after only three hours. It then cooled for two hours and cut back in. Clearly my set point of 5.5C was just too ambitious given today's ambient. So last ditch attempt to eek a couple more days while we get a replacement consists of (a) removing kick panels to maximise airflow: and (b) pull air up the back of the cabinet, over the radiator fins with four PC fans: (b) makes quite a racket but has dropped the temperature round the back by around 4C so is worth the 10W powering the fans if it gets us through the weekend. Similar temps forecasted for tomorrow so fingers and toes crossed.

Yes, the Bosch KIF81PFE0 is around the same price point at the Libherr IKBP3560 and has isolated, cooler bottom drawers with humidity control: I think this is my next best option but the energy use is stated as 150kWh/a so not as economical to run. The price is £1369 vs £1399 for the Liebherr if I was lucky enough to still be able to order one. I'm inclined to think it'd be a golden opportunity. SWMBO is not of the same mind though.

So I figured it out. The IKBP3560 is outgoing, at least a 2 year old model. Hence being discounted if you can get it at all. The equivalent newer models are firmly out of my price range. This leaves me with a conundrum: Grab the old one if I can or switch to Bosch etc. I normally go for last years hot TV or AV kit to save a load of dosh but I'm not so sure about a fridge?

One power tool I wish I had - a thicknesser.

I thought we'd be pushing the boat out price-wise with this but model it almost looks like their entry level product in this style! The Liebherr IRBD5150 looks identical, but is a couple of dB quieter - for another £330! Energy consumption is 89kWh/a vs 125kWh/a so I'm not tempted by the quieter model.

I need a new integrated larder fridge and have been looking at Bosch/Neff/Siemens identikit models. Nothing has caught my eye with those. But I spotted a Liebherr model (IKBP3560) that did seem quite interesting.... Not having any experience of this brand, me and SWMBO did some googling but came up with mixed messages. A quick search on these forums seemed to indicate no real issues, mostly positive comments. I would worry about cost and availability of spares and the odd little bits that break off. Energy wise it was a bit better than the equivalent B/N/S models, and quieter. Bonus points (from me) are for the LED lighting which seems very comprehensive. Thoughts?

What's the current definition of fuel poverty? It used to be an energy bill more than 10% of income. I think it's been changed since then.

At first it was the US electing Trump that started me thinking: what wheels have fallen off to get us into this dreadful place. Then after a few more bits of undercarriage fell off in the UK, it struck me how just much bullshit was backed-up and how it was now being liberally spayed around the world. If bullshit is allowed to go unchecked, nature has a way of making the consequences felt (eventually) even if people are too far up their own arses to notice or care. Much like how water has a way of introducing a dose of reality despite your plumber or roofer's bullshit. Climate change, Brexit, Ukraine and even Covid can all be seen clearly through this lens.

Oh plenty of people buy into that... While cursing the waiting list for getting PV on their roofs 🙄

This Midea ASHP manual Suggests it selects cooling mode automatically by the wired or wireless controller: ■ Pump operation and space heating and cooling According to the season, the unit(1) will switch to either heating or cooling mode according to the temperature detected by the standard controller (or optional wired controller (4)). But elsewhere it also says: ● Remote shutdown and Remote cooling/heating is optional function. ● Choose this function by DIP switch SW4_1 (for 1-phase) or SW3_1 (for 3-phase) on PCB board. Factory default has no remote cooling/heating. If we knew the model number it might help.

Thanks for the tip about short cycling. I think the thing is on its last legs so I'm just trying to squeeze a bit more life from it while we choose/get a replacement delivered. I think the refrigerant has diminished as it can't keep up with the recent hot weather. It will get down to set point during the night but once we start opening it during the day it struggles to recover. Yesterday, after lunch, it came on and stayed on for 6 hours yet the temperature kept creeping up. The thermal trip then went on the compressor! Now I understand why a few days before my intervention the temperature would mysteriously go off the top of the chart. Now before I see it's in danger of tripping the cut out I can nurse it back by increasing the set point then gradually lowering it to something acceptable in the evening. I was thinking of dragging it out to clean the radiator at the rear but I doubt that this entirely accounts for the inability to chill stuff in hot weather so it's new fridge time. But this made me wonder - MI's for integrated models don't seem to state that they need regular cleaning round the back while they always do for their free standing models! ( I know because I've downloaded the MI's for a number of models we're considering)

Or OLED tv showing a scene of your choosing. Oh, on second thoughts, forget that.

Is that how you would like to be addressed from now on? Seems very appropriate 😁

I seem to recall that a tonne of Willow provides around 4,000 Kwh so harvesting 12.5kg from trees planted one meter apart in a 80m2 patch should just about get you through the winter.

Bumping this up with some more upcycling I did today. Still had a few lengths of batten left over after using most of it for this bit of cladding to one of our boundaries: (not our scruffy roofline, but a neighbours!) This time I'm using it to rebuild the top of a picnic table that's been slowly falling apart: Not the ideal timber but I will give it all a good coating of paint. Should give it a couple more years of useful life.

...Swingers - judging by the ornament on display in the window.

Might be better to plant it with a fast growing timber crop. That way it will store up the sun's energy for you during the summer so you can burn it the following winter. Cheapest battery I know of that actually does work. Worth the few years it'll shave off your life burning stuff in the home? Given the alternative of freezing or starving to death (not what will actually show on the death certificate but the ultimate cause nonetheless) then yes, I think so.