Refrigerator

[Sara888]

I have lived the mustachian life for a fairly long time (was financially independent until my divorce and plan to be again relatively soon).  So at a yard sale today (moving sale, really), I was a bit started to hear the price of a five year old refrigerator set at $1200.  That is about 3 times the price I paid for my new one (I tried a used one but it died too quickly so I opted for new).  The woman was trying to sell it (and the shopper was buying it) because it is a 24 cubic foot unit or something.  ORiginally $3000.  Really?  I suppose the $3000 isn't even considered that expensive, right? What kind of electric does that draw?  Sometimes I am so out of touch! 

[James]

Wow.  As a daily use appliance I would pay more for quality, good insulation, decent space...  but $3000?  or even $1200 for a used fridge?  Those are big numbers.

[velocistar237]

Maybe I would pay that much for a Sun Frost, but not for anything else.

[shedinator]

3k for a fridge in the kitchen we'd eventually like to have wouldn't be so bad... but our ideal is to have a professional kitchen, so my wife can run her pastry business out of the home. For the average consumer, there's probably not much point paying that much.

[strider3700]

Maybe I would pay that much for a Sun Frost, but not for anything else.

Sunfrosts are probably the best out there  for energy use but you really need to do the math. 
some quick googling points out that  sunfrost makes a 120V unit with 3.9 cu ft freezer and 10 cubic foot refrigerator  that uses 249 kwh/year that sells for roughly $3095

GE makes a unit with a 4.11 cu ft freezer and  a 11.44 cubic foot refrigerator that uses 363 kwh/year that sells for roughly $650
so that's 114 kwh more per year. 
rounding my current electric rate up to 10 cents/kwh   the GE costs $11.40 cents more to run each year.  giving the sunfrost a payback period of $214 years.     
Go insane with inflation rates and make it $1/kwh and the sunfrost has a payback period of 21 years.   

Sunfrost may have been worth it a few years ago when you were going 100% off grid powered by solar exclusively   but it's possible to get solar panels for under $2/watt.  Sometimes $1/watt is possible and they keep saying they'll hit $0.50/watt in the near future as china's government subsidized factories ramp up to speed.    It's cheaper to just buy some more solar panels then it is to gain the efficiency of the sunfrost.   

You do have to do the research and select an efficient fridge  since there are some out there that will use two or 3 times the power for the same sized unit  but I'd be surprised if anyone can find a scenario where the extra cost of the sunfrost 120V units is worth it.  They also make 12V units which is totally different market and I'm not sure how it works out mathwise.

[velocistar237]

Good point. I poked around and found a 311 kWh model by GE for under $600.

This chest fridge concept is also interesting. I'm tempted, but I'm not sure I would want to design my kitchen around it.

[gooki]

I so want an underbench fridge drawer (and a separate freezer drawer). Prices on them are insane in my local country ($3000 each), so I'm tempted to make my own.