A friend of ours was asking me about what refrigerators are the best to buy. There are a number of different makes and models and they are considering a side by side with an in door ice maker and water dispenser. Before you make this purchase there are some serious considerations. Even before you start shopping for the exact model you want you have to consider what your budget is and if you need expensive addons that don’t really add that much to your life and might end up costing you more in the end.
If you look at the most basic refrigerator it will be a top freezer with a bottom refrigerator and it will be in the 20 cubic foot range give or take a couple cubic feet. The reason these refrigerators are so inexpensive is that they are the easiest to design and manufacture. There are all kinds of complex choices you can make when buying an appliance but the main thing to remember is the more it costs to buy the more it will cost to repair. Complexity in features and design also means if something goes wrong you probably won’t be fixing your refrigerator yourself after its warranty has run out.
Simple Is Always Best When Picking Appliances
Even if you are set on picking a refrigerator with a lot of features it is always best to pick one that has designed those features to work easily. More complex designs often mean that the company making the refrigerator wasn’t taking time in the design process.
Something as simple as wire racks in your refrigerator will allow airflow so that you don’t have very cold areas in some places and warmer area in others. Wire shelves are not liked by many people because they aren’t as pretty as the glass shelves but another feature they have is you can stick a warm pot on them if you have to but if you do that to glass you risk shattering the glass. You will find that wire rack shelves are available in the cheapest models and the most expensive commercial models that home owners don’t buy and the expensive retail models will have glass shelves. This is because pretty is overruling function and this is the direction you want to look when evaluating your purchases. Is this something that the best commercial models have or are you paying extra for something that does not have a return on economics and function.
Insulation Is The Most Important Feature Of A Refrigerator
Internal storage area is an important thing when you are looking for a refrigerator but refrigerators in our homes are designed to fit in a normal opening size. The option is to make the refrigerator taller or deeper but also to reduce the amount of wall thickness which holds the insulation. If you are comparing refrigerators in the store you can take a tape measure with you and get an idea of the thickness of the outside walls. An extra half inch can make a very big difference not only in how much your refrigerator will cost to run but also in the performance of the refrigerator. If the refrigerator has less insulation then it will have to run more often. If it runs more often you have a problem with vegetables freezing in the refrigerator or frostbite of food in the freezer. You can also have a situation where food spoils if it is placed in the door because the thickness of insulation in the door is less.
All of these things can be a problem for you over many years that you own your refrigerator and remember you will store food that costs many times more than your refrigerator did.
Replacing Filters And Other Parts On Your Refrigerator
One thing that most people forget is that a refrigerator with an ice maker, front door water and ice features also require maintenance. Not only do you need to clean and make sure the visible parts are disinfected but you also have to change filters.
Probably the easiest thing to do is change a filter that is external and not part of your refrigerator but when the filter is integrated into the refrigerator then replacing them can be difficult and expensive.
You should make a list of all of the things that you might need to replace and find out how much they cost. When you are at the store you can ask the sales person to show you how you remove the part and try doing it yourself.
If completing regular maintenance is difficult then you normally won’t do it.
Final Note
When choosing your refrigerator you will see an estimated cost of running it for a year that is on a yellow label on your refrigerator but you do need to keep in mind that those results are not always accurate for your home.
If you have children or teens or if you are at work all day and eat out all the time then your refrigerator will cycle differently however things like wall insulation, good flow of air in the interior, quality door seals and the lack of openings in the doors of the refrigerator for ice and water or glass preview doors and other things will have an effect not only on the cost to run your refrigerator but also on how well it performs.
Honestly I never suggest expensive appliances because they have expensive parts. A quick look at a base model and an expensive retail side by side of the same or very similar internal storage size will show that the more expensive model is twice as much or at this time maybe about $1000 more than the base model. To cost that much more really has to mean it performs much better and keeping a pitcher of water on the shelf in the refrigerator is probably worth saving twice as much on the initial purchase and much more later when you need to make repairs.