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Energy Saver: Refrigerator & Freezer Set Points
Are your refrigerator and freezer thermostat settings correct? This is balance between food safety and energy conservation. I defer to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on food safety but I take exception as to how they state the specifics. For food safety, the FDA recommends your refrigerator be "at or below 40 F (4 C)." For freezers, the FDA recommends the temperature to be "at or below 0 F (-18 C)."
If 40 F (4 C) is safe for the refrigerator, then set it at 40 F (4 C). If 0 F (-18 C) is adequate for the freezer, then set it at 0 F (-18 C). It takes energy to get to those settings. The farther your refrigerator or freezer has to cool the temperature below the ambient temperature, the more energy it takes. There is no reason to waste energy on the "or below."
Some refrigerators and freezers have direct temperature readouts. Some simply have a dial that says something like "cold" to the left and "colder" to the right or similar. Regardless of whether you have gages or 'dumb' dials, get a cooking thermometer and one other thermometer. Both need to have a range to below 0 F (-18 C). The reason for two is the inherent inaccuracy in all measuring devices. What the measuring device reports can be off by 10% to 20%. Additionally, the amount of error can change at different ends of the scale that each thermometer is capable of measuring. Hence, we want a couple of temperature reading opinions.
First, let's do some thermometer calibration. We know that water in the form of ice is 32 F (0 C) at 'standard conditions.' In this case, standard means at 1 atmosphere which equals 101.3 kPa and 14.7 PSI. As you travel to high elevations or low elevations, the 32 F (0 C) number will vary a little bit as ambient pressure varies. However, for our purpose, that variance is insignificant. Place your ...