The Repair

Part 2

2

"Bah, I myself have one of these disposable fridges," said the repairman. "And it also worked four years and that's it. Like by a clockwork. So do you know what I did?"

"No, I don't know what you did," said the editor with a hint of irony in his voice.

"Well... First I determined if the leak was on the high or the low side... Thank god, at least this is still possible to do in the sense of repair. It happened to be on the high one..."

Noticing not understanding in the editor's eyes, the repairman explained:

"I mean, on the high pressure side, in the condenser. The standard leakage into the plastic foam. So I took a length of copper pipe and soldered it here and here," the repairman got up from his chair and pointed. "In other words I made a new condenser. And then I took a forty-liter plastic barrel like one used for pickling cucumbers and put it right on the refrigerator (he made gesture with both hands). Then I inserted (smooth movement) part of that pipe there inside. And poured water. As a result, I have now plenty of free hot water in the kitchen."

"So simple?"

"Yep."

"Is it hot?"

"Forty five degrees Celsius, average."

"Is it hot?"

"Hot enough to wash dishes or hands. Have you ever measured the temperature of the hot water you habitually use? But the temperature isn't the point, speaking broadly. Everything depends on what coolant is used. There are coolants that can heat the water to nearly boiling state. Isobutane of all the popular coolants gives the lowest temperature of the condenser and, consequently, of the water. And it is still hot enough. And if it isn't enough, you can get the remaining degrees from a common resistive heater integrated in the same water tank or in the flow heater after it. It wouldn't make the enterprise any less economically viable. The point is I don't plug in the kitchen boiler anymore and don't have to pay the respective money for electricity. If I had made this installation before, I wouldn't have bought the boiler at all. What effect can be more direct and obvious? Now imagine: what if all the refrigerators in the world were made like that? Voila, the global warming problem is solved."

The repairman finished gesticulating and sank back on his chair with a smug expression on his face.

The editor smiled.

"At my job I often have to deal with fantastic stories, but... (he nodded towards the bottle with the remnants of mineral water) how much heat can be in this to wash plates and incidentally stop the global warming?"

"A very common misconception," the repairman raised his finger instructively. "Granted, in the food as such there is little heat. But even if the refrigerator is actively used, that is, if you often put warm things in and take cold things out, not more than five percent of electricity consumed by your fridge is spent on cooling food. How do you like this efficiency?"

"Well, so it can't be any better. Or what do you mean?"

"I mean that if you, for example, go to bed at night and come into the kitchen in the morning... Or even better: if you go for a week's trip and then return home, you will hear that your refrigerator keeps turning on and off, on and off, the same way as always. But everything you put in it got cold a week ago, right? Why does it work, then? What is it cooling? Well, the air around it. And simultaneously it is warming this same air by this very grate, right here, in the immediate vicinity. Can this be called a rational of reasonable use of electricity? It's like ladling water with a sieve. Think now that a quarter of all electricity produced in the world is used for refrigerating and air conditioning. What if we utilize all this heat and stop spending clean and nice electricity for heating water or just the air outside the window, as it is the case with air conditioners making global warming in the most immediate way? But even that is not the gist yet. The most piquant detail is that for every unit of electric power the fridge takes from the outlet it can produce three to four times more heat than it is done by the plain resistive element used in common boilers. That's where the main potential is hidden."