Beer fridge or full size fridge?

[Lamb]

My husband has a "beer shelf" in our refrigerator and our refrigerator isn't very big so it is hard during holidays when I have more food in there to try to fit things...especially leftovers! So we're looking at our options of maybe getting a beer fridge or a full size fridge. My worry is noise level. I'm very sensitive at night to sound and I can hear our current fridge running on the floor beneath me and I don't want anything louder than that.

Is it safe to keep something like this in a garage...even in winter?

I would suggest the basement but in a power outage I don't think any of our outlets down there are hooked up to the house generator.

Love to hear your tips/advice/experiences on this.

 

[tango]

Why not get a small chiller in the basement that he can keep beer in? If the power fails the worst that happens is the beer isn't cold. You can also set the temperature because unless he's drinking generic fizzy yellow garbage the chances are it wants to be kept cool rather than ice cold.

Keeping a fridge in the garage should be safe. In the winter it won't have to work as hard so you should be fine, as long as it doesn't get cold enough to freeze the refrigerants. I'd be more concerned in the summer when it will have to work a lot harder to keep things cool. (I'm assuming your garage isn't particularly well insulated against the heat here)

Depending on how warm your basement gets it may not even be a problem if the power fails for a time. If the power fails it's not as if the temperature inside a fridge rises instantly. When we had our new breaker panel fitted we had no power to the house at all for several hours and in that time the chest freezer rose from 0 degrees to maybe 12 degrees. Still well below freezing, the food was still perfectly good. Chances are if we'd lost power more permanently it would have been at least 24 hours and probably longer still before the food started to thaw. If needs be you can wrap a secondary fridge with blankets during a power outage to help preserve the cold inside it.

 

[Andrew]

I have a full size freezer and full size fridge on the garage never had problems with it, needs a good cleaning now and then

 

[vince284]

I have a fridge and a freezer chest in the garage and I haven't had any problems. My garage is insulated but not heated or air-conditioned. So it can easily range from -10 F to 95 F. I mostly keep beer and other sealed (capped) drinks in the fridge and if I ever lost power to the fridge, I wouldn't care. However, just one year it stayed so cold that even the beer froze but that's only happened once in 30 years. They do make heavy duty fridges specifically for garages, but they are costly and when I retire the fridge from the house, I move it to the garage and throw the oldest one out.

Just get an apartment sized second hand fridge and stick it in the garage, it should be just fine. It may have a small freezer where you can put glasses in to "frost" them!

 

[Josiah]

Beer is important.

So is wine.

NEITHER should be kept in the garage. In most places, it is simply going to get too hot. Now, if you live in a locale where the garage never gets above 70 degrees or so, it would be fine. Same is true for wine.



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[vince284]

I keep my wine in my "wine cellar", the beer is in the fridge in the garage. I would imagine the inside of the fridge stays around 38-43 F. I don't have a thermometer testing it every minute. But it may get colder in the winter. My white wines I chill as I need them. I don't have a wine cooler.

 

[vince284]

I keep my wine in my "wine cellar", the beer is in the fridge in the garage. I would imagine the inside of the fridge stays around 38-43 F. I don't have a thermometer testing it every minute. But it may get colder in the winter. My white wines I chill as I need them. I don't have a wine cooler.

 

[tango]

Just an alternative approach, is it difficult to get at the wiring for the sockets in the basement? Home electrics aren't all that difficult - the most difficult part is usually figuring out how to physically run a wire from one point to another. If you're talking an unfinished basement it gets much easier because you can drill holes through ceiling joists without having to pull down the ceiling first.