The reason Americans typically have large refrigerators has to do with yet another inefficiency-sprawled out living. Many people shop for groceries at big box stores perhaps once or twice a month. As a result, they need the space to store a large amount of perishables. Back in the days when people lived in cities, and could walk to the store every day, there was no need for such huge refrigerators. I'm not defending this lifestyle, which I consider wasteful on many levels, but simply stating that large refrigerators serve a necessary function. Grocery shopping is generally an ordeal in suburbia where you have to get in the car, drive 10 or 20 miles to the local big box store, spend a few hours shopping ( and often another hour waiting on long lines to pay for it all ). As a result, it's something people would rather do as infrequently as possible. And it's also a vivid illustration of why sprawl is wasteful in more ways than is immediately obvious. On a positive note, there is a trickle of people migrating back to cities which will likely turn into a flood if energy prices go up ( actually
when they go up, not
if ).
time said:
It can hold a colossal amount of food and drink, certainly enough for 6 people.
Or a single person like
him.
If a toilet room is 2.1x1m or 2.3x0.9m with a ceiling of 2.4m, that's about 5000 liters. Unless they're jtr1962, most people would be happy with a 40W incandescent bulb in a room that size, especially if the walls are a light color.
I've actually been mostly getting along with the light from this nightlight I
modded with LEDs. About 70 lumens, plenty to do most of my business, using only 1.7 watts. The bright lights are for when I shower so I can see what I'm doing. I made the LED nightlight to avoid turning on the fluorescents as much as possible since fluorescents don't like starting. The bath has 4 14W 5000K CFLs in one fixture, and a circline fixture on the ceiling with 2 circular lamps ( 22W and 32W IIRC ). Total lumens is probably in the 5K area, but we need that much to send a decent amount of light into the shower area. Future project is LED lighting for the shower ( low voltage supply of course ). So yes, the bathroom at present has a lot of lighting, but it's not used very frequently.
I've seen some homes which use 1000 watts of incandescents in high hats to light the family room. Ironically, given the size of many houses, this huge wattage didn't even really light the room all that brightly. Of course the homeowners got annoyed when I told them you could light the room brighter with a pair of 4x32W T8 fixtures and save about 3/4 of your power usage. For some reason Americans seem averse to using linear tubes in non-utility areas of their homes, opting instead for wasteful high-hats with incandescents, or at best CFLs ( which to me aren't much better given that you throw away the ballast when they burn out ). When comparing asthethics, I'm just not seeing how having a bunch of holes in your ceiling is any better than having a couple of flush-mount linear tube fixtures. Besides that, there are plenty of ways to integrate linear tubes into homes in ways in which they don't look "industrial" if only lighting designers would try. Instead, we're still using a lighting form factor ( i.e. the screw-base lamp ) which was obsolete not long after Mr. Edison assumed room temperature.
It is bright enought to locate and remove what is needed in less than 2 minutes.
The unit is only about four years old, so the efficiency is decent. I had a large refrigerator years ago, which resulted in keeping stuff in there longer and having more trouble finding things.
orc:Ack. Typos galore.
