"Well... the artwork isn't bad. Not bad at all... I owe the guy a bonus," thought the editor-in-chief of The Wondrous World, a popular science-or rather, sci-fi and fantasy-magazine. By "the guy," he naturally meant the illustrator (and since this is an impeccably true story in every respect, we are bound to convey not only every spoken word, but every unspoken thought as well). The preprint of the September issue, or to be precise, its hard-copy version, lay on the desk before him. The general readership, much like the art-gazers, was still waiting for the issue to drop in cyberspace.
The magazine cover featured a bird's-eye view-or perhaps the view from an anti-grav craft, which was also in the picture. Dwindling into the distance all the way to the horizon, a chain of giant wind turbines stood in formation. Farther away, at the foot of deep blue mountains, vast fields of solar panels gleamed with a violet hue. A wondrous world of the future...
The present, however, kept the editor tethered to his seat. There were still a couple of hours left in the workday, but the decision had been made. Nothing would have stopped the editor from signing off on the proofs and heading home to start his long-awaited vacation the very next day, were it not for two circumstances.
The first was Liza, his (and the executive) secretary. She had asked for the afternoon off to pick up or drop off her kid (maybe both) from somewhere or other. This handed the editor an opportunity far too good to waste: the chance to ascend the pedestal of heroic devotion to the common cause-both on a global publishing scale and in terms of this specific business's prosperity... and so on and so forth. It was patently clear that such moral fortitude deserved some compensation, preferably in the form of a ticket to this solo performance for the editor himself. And so, today he would stay from clock-in to clock-out.
Despite being a modest man, easily satisfied with an audience of one, the editor naturally didn't want to waste a good example on his staff. Thus, he had called a video conference that wrapped up about half an hour ago. Granted, it wasn't quite the same as a physical presence, but one has to live in whatever trying times one is given.
No, it was something else that slightly gnawed at the editor's sense of perfection-as always happens when necessity is rebranded as a virtue. The real reason he was stuck at his desk was that the selfsame Liza had reported that their office fridge-about which she had already complained before-had finally given up the ghost. No matter what she did to it ("I wonder what exactly," the editor thought in passing), it was all in vain. So, she had called the service center, and they promised to send a repairman in the afternoon. And since the editor was staying anyway, wouldn't he mind... right? It was hard not to notice that Liza (who fancied herself a clever and resourceful woman) had diplomatically withheld this information until after she secured his permission to leave. He couldn't help but feel a little played, walking straight into a trap.
The publication's headquarters on the seventh floor of an office building consisted of a small reception area and a much larger room. The latter, currently drenched in sunlight, doubled as the editor's office, a meeting room, and a storage space for computer hardware stacked on metal shelves, along with various boxes piled in corners and under desks. The room also housed essentials like a coffee machine, tea supplies, and, of course, the refrigerator. Still, there was plenty of open space, and the view from the windows, unobstructed by high-rises, invited dreamy contemplation. The only departure from prime second-rate office decor was a shotgun hanging on the wall behind the editor's chair, where our protagonist sat at the opening of this tale.
He sighed, pulled a wet wipe from the pack, and wiped his bald head and rather bulging, bloodshot eyes. Neither the wide-open windows nor the large floor fan humming three meters away brought any relief. The editor filled a glass with mineral water, but even as it poured from the bottle, it gurgled lifelessly. "Lukewarm..."
He pulled his laptop closer.
Being an editor-in-chief had its perks. What would rightfully be considered a breach of discipline and a waste of company time for an ordinary office drone-like idling on the internet-took on the respectable colors of "searching for new concepts" or "developing editorial strategy" when done by the boss. Yet the news feed on his screen was hardly fit for any purpose. It was a bleak roll call of freak rains flooding Europe, wildfires tearing through Yakutia, a heat dome suffocating North America, and the planet's dropping albedo due to melting Arctic ice... Just another dreadful summer of another coronavirus year.
"If things keep going this way," the editor thought, "it won't be long before..."
In his mind's eye rose the boundless, bottomless wetlands of Canada and the Siberian bogs, currently locked in permafrost alongside trillions of cubic meters of methane-a greenhouse gas dozens of times more hazardous than the notorious carbon dioxide. It would take only a tiny nudge to reach a critical mass of atmospheric heat, and then some weather fluke would trigger an unstoppable chain reaction. A year would come when winter never arrived. The permafrost would dissolve back into swampland. The rapid melting of Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets would begin, drowning vast continental territories under a seventy-meter deluge of brackish ocean waters, turning all major cities into uninhabitable miasmas.
"And it will all end in forty-two months. But first, a dragon with seven heads will rise from the sea, and on each head a... crown," the editor recalled. "And the dragon will force everyone who survives to be marked on the hand or the forehead, and no one will be allowed to buy or sell without it..."
A knock at the door.
The editor startled and opened his eyes. On the threshold stood an aging man in faded overalls, carrying a hefty toolbox typical of plumbers, electricians, and their ilk.
"Who called the doctor for the ailing fridge?" he asked cheerily.
"Ah, yes, right here," the editor said. "There it is."
The repairman took his time entering, glanced around for some reason, and, stepping up to the fridge, yanked the door open. Muttering a password or an incantation-"Isobutane!"-to whatever was inside, he turned to the editor.
"Did you notice if it was gurgling before it died?"
"Gurgling," the editor echoed mechanically. "I mean, no, I don't remember."
"Let's see..."
The repairman began pulling the fridge away from the wall, then fished an electrical tester out of his kit and half-disappeared into the newly formed crevice. After a few minutes of silence, muttering, and shuffling, there came a brief hiss and an "Aha!" The repairman emerged from behind the appliance.
"Good news and bad news. The compressor windings are intact; we just need to swap out the pill..."
"The pill?"
"Yeah, the PTC thermistor in the starter relay. But there's barely any pressure left in the system, and that's the bad news. Must be a leak somewhere. Give me a hand moving it?"
Together, they hauled the fridge completely away from the wall and spun it around so its backside faced the room.
"So, where is this pill?"
"Right here."
The editor squatted down beside the repairman. Flattered by the attention, the mechanic added:
"And this is the service valve. Refrigerant gets pumped in through this port-see? It's pretty much the same thing as a car tire valve. Usually, the factory seals this tube shut permanently, but it looks like your fridge has been worked on before. Someone brazed this valve in to make topping it up and checking the pressure easier. Handy for us."
"Worked on before?.." The editor grew thoughtful. "I don't even remember where we got this fridge; it was probably left behind when I leased the office. But it looks fairly new, doesn't it?"
"Oh, it's not old at all. But... that's how they build 'em nowadays. Planned obsolescence. Ever heard of it?"
"Of course. The forever lightbulbs. We get articles pitched about that all the time..."
"Lightbulbs or not, nobody sees the year-by-year drop in appliance quality clearer than us repairmen," the mechanic remarked with a touch of bitterness, pulling a small compressor and a brass manifold gauge assembly with multicolored hoses from his box. "Ten or fifteen years ago, things were built to last. Now, it's considered a miracle if they survive their warranty period..."
"What are you going to do now?"
"Pump some pressure into the system and hunt for the leak. It's a good thing the condenser... this cooling grid here... is on the outside."
"Where else would it be?"
"Most modern ones hide it inside the chassis. See any logic in that? Stuffing hot coils inside a refrigerator, heh. They say it looks sleeker and lets you push it flush against the wall. A brilliant achievement, truly. As if anyone ever looks at the back. In the older models, you could back out a few screws and pull the whole unit out. Repairing and dismantling was a breeze. But now... who can actually fix one from scratch anymore? You think this just happened on its own? No, engineers are given these parameters on purpose. Where serviceability used to be the goal, now it's unserviceability-with a heavy emphasis on the 'un'. Quite a mid-air pivot, and they pulled it off without slowing down production, on a massive scale! And nobody seemed to notice. Lightbulbs, honestly... But that's not even the half of it. The classic engineering challenge used to be ensuring equal longevity-making sure all the main parts of a machine had roughly the same lifespan so it would run trouble-free for years, and when it finally gave out, you wouldn't mind scrapping the whole thing. And if repairs or maintenance were needed, the design made them as simple and convenient as possible. Well, today's sabotage-engineers have a completely different agenda, and it's no cakewalk either. Their job now is to maximize unequal longevity, specifically paired with unserviceability, so things look brand new but you still have to throw them away. To do that, they have to figure out exactly which component to rig with a structural time bomb. It has to be impossible to defuse, its failure has to be catastrophic, and the detonation has to happen right on schedule."
The repairman flicked the compressor on for a few seconds, then off, and closed the valve on the brass manifold.
"May I?.." He reached for the bottle of mineral water on the editor's desk.
"Help yourself, but it's warm..."
The repairman took the bottle and splashed a bit of water onto a rag he'd unearthed from his tools alongside a bar of soap. Rubbing up a lather, he began smearing it over suspicious joints in the coils, watching for bubbles. The editor remained standing over him.
"Take the compressor, for instance," the repairman resumed his lecture. "Is that a good place to plant a 'bomb'? No, it's terrible. First off, if a compressor dies, it's obviously just the compressor, and it's easy to diagnose. Second, it's not hard to swap out. Third, it's unpredictable: try to build a defect into a compressor, and it might fail in a week, a year, or a decade, which is unacceptable because the product must last exactly three years of warranty plus one year max. Same goes for the control board: they have to make it reliable because you never know what will fry or when, plus it's incredibly easy to replace... Easy, but not cheap, since that same control module costs about four times less when built into a new fridge than when bought as a spare part. It's the same old heavy-handed carrot-and-stick routine to force the customer to junk a perfectly good appliance and buy a new one. Mind you, if you want a secret, all this digital nonsense is useless anyway. The cold is the same in any fridge, basic or high-end..."
"Where do they put the 'bombs' then?"
"The tubing. They join them with glue. Glue! Look here, you see brazed copper, but tucked away inside, out of sight, it's all glued. What a joke, right? If brazing works out here, why is it suddenly bad in there? Especially with manufacturing standardization and all... But no. Because brazing, you see, produces too unreliable an... ahem, unreliability. Whereas sealant breaks down right on cue. Chemical degradation. And it's not just the joints. The tubes themselves are a weak link. Like a fuse... or the opposite. If one thing doesn't fail, the other will. A guaranteed breakdown, so to speak. Then again, you can't just use cheap tubing across the board. You need a precise failure factor. All my colleagues know exactly where the lines corrode first-ninety-five percent of all such cases. You think the designers don't know? They know, and they could easily protect them. But I can't. Because to get to those spots, I'd have to tear the whole cabinet apart. That's why I said it's a blessing your condenser is this style. You can braze it or replace it, and finding the leak is easy. Mind you, these external grids almost never fail, which is probably why they don't mind putting them on the outside. Creative logic, right? But even this design is rare now. Instead, they don't just glue the lines together anymore; they glue the whole condenser inside the cabinet walls," he patted the side of the fridge, "and then inject polyurethane foam into the space between the outer skin and the liner. Foam insulation. And that's the end of the story. No way in, nothing you can do. Same with the evaporator, except they glue it to the plastic interior wall where the frost builds up. They glue it, and then it delaminates. So the compressor hums, but there's no frost. Funny, isn't it? They invented a new excuse to send a fridge to the landfill. By the way, yours has that kind of evaporator too. So," the repairman groaned, pushing himself up to his feet, "here's what we'll do. I've checked every joint I could reach, no holes in sight. Now we wait at least half an hour. If the pressure on the gauge doesn't drop, I'll swap the filter-drier and recharge the system. If it drops, I'll join the chorus advising you to buy a new one. A piece of... design art like this only makes sense to fix for some grandma out in the country, and even then, self-respecting mechanics don't bother gutting that foam until the chunks fly," the repairman chuckled, clearly recalling something or rather someone, "they just leave the factory nonsense alone and build it from scratch. Or maybe it's better to say the old-fashioned way, the way it should have been done from the start. They drill two holes through the back and mount everything separately, inside and out-condenser, evaporator, the works. And no glue."
The editor went back to his desk. The repairman dragged a vacant chair over to the fridge and sat down to watch the gauge.
"I think you're drawing rather sweeping conclusions from what might just be shoddy workmanship and, I grant you, a flawed design," the editor said. "I see no reason to call it deliberate sabotage. Besides, the world doesn't revolve around refrigerators, even if we're just talking about home appliances. Do you fix washing machines, for instance?"
"On occasion."
"And where are the bombs planted by the saboteur-designers there?"
"They put plastic bearing tubs on the drum."
"Well, I don't know..."
A minute ticked by.
"Why plastic bearing tubs?" the editor suddenly asked.
"Why not? It ticks all the boxes. Catastrophic failure, a highly predictable lifespan, hidden away. Frankly, it's the only spot in a washing machine I'd pick for the job myself. So again, hardly a coincidence. Otherwise, they'd have to hardwire a kill-switch chip or a program that bricks the machine after a set amount of hours or even idle time, just like they did with printers. Big scandal about that a few years back... They're probably more cautious now, so if there's a vital mechanical part, they prefer to use that. People-or rather, consumers-are usually more fatalistic when it comes to raw, material wear and tear. Even if they curse the manufacturers for pinching pennies."
"But isn't that what it is? Aren't they just pinching pennies?"
"On each individual fridge? Sure. But manufacturing five fridges that last four years each instead of one that lasts twenty? That's a hell of a way to save a penny."
Silence fell once more. Then the editor rose from his chair, walked over to the floor fan, and angled it so a portion of the breeze reached the repairman too.
2
'Hell, I've got one of those disposable fridges myself,' the repairman said. 'Lasted four years and that was it. Like clockwork. So, you know what I did?'
'No, I have no idea what you did,' the editor said, a heavy dose of irony in his voice.
'Well... First, I had to figure out whether the leak was on the high side or the low side. Thank God you can still at least diagnose that much. Turns out, it was on the high side...'
Noticing the blank look in the editor's eyes, the mechanic clarified:
'The high-pressure side, I mean. In the condenser. Your standard leak into the foam. So, I grabbed a length of copper tubing and brazed it here and here,' the repairman stood up, gesturing with his hand. 'In other words, I built a brand-new condenser. Then I took a forty-liter plastic barrel-the kind people use to pickle cucumbers-and sat it right on top of the fridge (he made a wide, two-handed gesture). Then I snaked (a smooth, fluid motion) a section of that tubing right inside. And filled it with water. Long story short, now I've got plenty of free hot water in my kitchen.'
'Just like that?'
'Just like that.'
'And it's actually hot?'
'Forty to fifty degrees Celsius on average.'
'Is that a lot?'
'Plenty for washing dishes or your hands. Have you ever actually measured the temperature of the water you normally use? But broadly speaking, the exact temperature isn't even the core of the issue. It all comes down to the refrigerant. Some of them can heat water almost to a boil and still cool the fridge just fine. Out of all the popular refrigerants, isobutane gives you the lowest condenser temperature, and therefore the coolest water. And even then, it's plenty hot. Propane, which is pretty similar and also very common, can give you another ten degrees. And if even that isn't enough-say, for some sanitary regulations-you can easily make up the missing degrees to reach the canonical seventy with a standard resistive heating element built right into the same water tank. It wouldn't make the setup any less cost-effective. Though in reality, nobody needs it that hot, except maybe to disinfect the tank once a year, and even that's just paranoid over-engineering since tap water is already heavily chlorinated. Heck, my bathroom boiler is permanently set to forty or forty-five degrees, and nobody's arresting me for it-the manufacturer built that option right in. But this way, I don't have to fiddle with mixing valves or worry about scalding myself; I just have cold water and hot water, right at the temperature you can get from any fridge without any extra bells and whistles. The bottom line is, I don't turn on the kitchen boiler anymore, and I don't pay a dime for that electricity. If I'd built this rig earlier, I wouldn't have bought a boiler at all. What effect could be more direct and obvious than that? Now imagine: what if every refrigerator in the world was built this way? Voila, global warming solved!'
The repairman finished his wild gesturing and dropped back into his chair with a smug, self-satisfied grin.
The editor smiled.
'In my line of work, I deal with sci-fi stories all the time, but...' he nodded toward the bottle containing the remnants of his mineral water, 'how much heat could there possibly be in that to wash plates and, in passing, halt global warming?'
'A very common misconception,' the repairman said, raising a pedagogical finger. 'Of course, food as such holds very little heat. But even if a fridge is heavily used-meaning you're constantly putting warm stuff in and taking cold stuff out-that only accounts for about five to seven percent of the electricity it consumes. How's that for efficiency?'
'Well, I suppose that's as good as it gets. Or what are you driving at?'
'I'm driving at the fact that if you go to bed at night and walk into the kitchen in the morning... Or better yet, if you go away for a week's vacation and come back home, you'll hear your fridge cycling on and off just like it always does. But everything you put inside it cooled down or froze a week ago, didn't it? Then why is it running? What is it cooling? It's cooling the air around it. And at the same time, it's heating that very same air with these exact coils, right here, in immediate proximity. Can you really call that an intelligent use of electricity? It's like carrying water in a sieve. Now consider that a quarter of all electricity generated worldwide is used specifically for refrigeration, freezing food, and air conditioning. Just imagine what the world would look like if we reclaimed all that heat and stopped wasting clean, useful electricity on warming up water or even the air outside? Because that's exactly what air conditioners do, directly driving global warming. But even that isn't the kicker. The most delicious detail is that for every unit of energy a fridge pulls from the wall, it can pump out three times more heat than a simple resistive element-also known as a heating coil-used in ordinary water heaters. That is where the real payload is hidden.'
'Hmm... Potential is one thing, execution is another,' the editor drawned, sounding bored.
'To bypass the debate on technical feasibility and economics...'
'Forgive the interruption. Have you always repaired refrigerators?'
'In these trying times, many people lose their professions and turn to a trade,' the repairman replied evasively. 'So, rather than argue whether it's possible or profitable, I'll just say that this idea is already hardwired into the millions of heat pumps sold every single year worldwide, specifically to heat water using ambient air. And a refrigerator, like any thermal machine, is the exact same heat pump. The only difference is that in heat pumps called 'heat pumps,' they try to maximize the ambient heat reaching the evaporators, while in heat pumps called 'refrigerators,' they try to prevent it-though as we can see, not very successfully. And one more minor difference: there are millions of heat pumps, but billions of refrigerators. Not to mention the small detail that you still have to buy a heat pump, whereas humanity has already paid for the refrigerators.'
'How do you know there are billions?'
'I crunched the numbers. Generally, statistics don't give you a straight answer to that question, but you can dig up commercial data on how many units were sold in a specific country in a given year. So, if you divide the country's population by that number, multiplied by the expected lifespan of the appliance, and then cross-reference that with the average household size in some of the most populous nations, you can conclude that for every three people on the globe, there is one domestic refrigerator-though in some countries, it might be two. Then again, I could have spared myself the research and calculations and arrived at the exact same figure through sheer intuition. Really, how many people share a single fridge? Exactly. And if, as they say, there are eight billion people on this rock, that means two point seven billion household refrigerators. Now, if we throw in all the home air conditioners, which also number over a billion...'
The repairman raised his eyebrows and swept his hand through the air.
'What are we actually talking about here? How much energy can you get out of a single fridge?'
'Simple math. See this sticker? The energy efficiency rating on your fridge is quite high, A-plus. The manufacturer-and you know manufacturers aren't going to overstate this number-writes right here that it consumes 325 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. We multiply that figure by at least three, and we see that you can harvest roughly a thousand kilowatt-hours of thermal energy from a single refrigerator every year. Now, we remember that there are 365 days in a year and that three people use one fridge. So, it's completely realistic to say that every single person on the planet could get one kilowatt-hour of free or salvaged electricity every single day. Impressive, right? That's a game-changer, man!'
'But not everyone heats their water with electricity,' the editor countered. 'At my place, for instance, hot water just flows out of the tap. How can I save electricity if I don't use it for that in the first place?'
'But that hot water isn't free, is it? I mean, it doesn't cost the same as cold water, right? So maybe there's still a point in using the heat from the fridge? Ultimately, if you don't open the hot water tap, it's the exact same thing as me not turning on my electric boiler. But it's not just about the money. For you to have hot water in your pipes, gas or coal has to be burned. Usually, municipal boiler plants operate at around 85 percent efficiency, meaning fifteen percent goes up in smoke right at the source. To that, you have to add the fuel used to extract and deliver that energy to the plant or building, then add the heat loss along the way to your apartment-and all of that translates into atmospheric emissions. If you heat your water with your refrigerator, even if it sounds like a joke, no new or additional emissions, pollution, or costs are generated.'
'However, your installation costs something too, doesn't it?'
'Well, let's do the math. With your permission, I won't include the cost of the metal tubing. Because I've already bought it and it's already inside my fridge. So what's left? A plastic barrel, about five meters of plastic pipe, and one or two valves? Personally, I didn't even have to pay for the barrel because I already owned my boiler, and the only thing missing from that boiler was a length of metal pipe running through the water inside it. And inside that pipe, of course, would be the freon from the fridge. But even if you had to buy everything required for a DIY retrofit, at today's electricity rates, it would pay for itself in two or three months max. After that, you'd be saving money for decades. What other so-called sustainable energy tech can boast that kind of economic returns?'
'Even so, that's a very narrow view,' the editor remarked. 'You said yourself that refrigerators are probably the most widely used and sold appliances in the world. So how can you ignore the consumer's perspective? And not just theirs, but the manufacturer's, who wants to satisfy customer demand better than the competition. A fridge is a fridge. It does exactly what I bought it for. If I want to buy one as a gift, for instance, I want it to be a gift, not a headache for someone. Not to mention that I want it to be compact, easy to transport, move around, and place here, there, or wherever, without dragging a water barrel behind it.'
The repairman flared up, his speech turning slightly clipped:
'Then... then why cry crocodile tears over global warming and all the rest of it? If the entire ecological future of the planet, along with all its species, including humans, is nothing compared to the hypothetical convenience of a consumer shuffling a fridge around the kitchen. What is it, a chair? For God's sake!'
'But your plastic pickle barrel on top of the fridge is just ridiculous, can't you see that?' said the editor, who in turn was starting to lose his cool. 'What? Am I supposed to fill it with a bucket and scoop water out with a cup?'
'No need for that. Naturally, I automated everything later, which isn't that big of a deal. For a while, I thought about filling the barrel with cold water using a float valve and overflow pipe, like a toilet tank, and skimming the hot water off the top with a floating hose. But then a better idea struck me. You see, after my experiment yielded brilliant results, it became obvious that I needed a much larger tank, and putting it on top of the fridge wouldn't be the best solution, if it was even possible. So next time, I bought an 80-liter drum and engineered everything into its lid,' the repairman began gesturing again, 'namely, the inlet and outlet for the freon lines-the condenser, that is-as well as the inlet and outlet for the water pipes. And I screwed it tight onto the drum.'
'How on earth did you screw the lid on with all those pipes attached to the fridge and the sink or whatever?' the editor asked slyly.
'You have excellent spatial visualization,' the repairman complimented his client.
'Thanks, but it's not me. You're just explaining it so well with your hands... Well?'
'Actually, I screwed the drum into the lid. While it was empty, obviously,' the repairman laughed.
'Ah, I see. And...'
'And I have an extra line in the lid specifically for drainage.'
'So where did you put the drum if not on the fridge?'
'Set it right on the floor. When I open the hot tap, I'm actually letting cold water in to fill the drum from the bottom, and that cold water displaces the hot water from the top of the drum, forcing it down the line into the sink or shower. The freon in the condenser flows and heats the water in the opposite direction, from top to bottom. That way, the hot water and cold water stay in two distinct layers that don't mix-it's a counter-flow temperature gradient. Only their relative thickness changes. And I left the bottom of the drum uninsulated, just in case. Combined with the exposed section of the condenser after the drum, it completely guarantees the freon won't overheat. So thanks to all these simple tricks, I can place the tank anywhere convenient without needing high ground. The whole thing operates under very low water pressure, no more than one-twentieth of standard plumbing pressure, but perfectly adequate for any shower. The entire system is so low-maintenance it doesn't require heavy tank walls or a perfect seal, and honestly, you could give it a hundred-year warranty. Plus, it's exceptionally safe because even this minor overpressure is only generated when you're actually using the water; the pressure doesn't bottle up in the drum, so you won't flood the neighbor downstairs. I don't know why standard electric water heaters don't use this blueprint. Too simple? Too cheap? And who's going to run out and buy a new boiler because the old one rusted out and leaked, if there's nothing here to rust in the first place?'
The repairman shrugged and glanced at the pressure gauge.
'So, the absolute maximum you can harvest from one fridge is three kilowatt-hours a day?' the editor asked. 'Let me picture that... What's the wattage on this kettle?'
The repairman walked over to the desk where the kettle stood, lifted it, and checked the base.
'Two kilowatts.'
'So, it's about as much heat as a two-kilowatt kettle can produce in an hour and a half...' the editor said, tracing something on the ceiling.
'And it wouldn't be boiling water, but around fifty degrees,' the repairman aided the editor's imagination.
'Yes, not nothing,' the editor said. 'But not a massive amount either. For one person, sure, it's enough, assuming it's a shower, say, not a bath. But for a family of three, if they're sharing one fridge between them like you said-hardly.'
'And there I catch you at your word,' the repairman raised his finger again. 'Because up until now, we've been talking about free hot water. Or rather, free water heating. But usually, a compressor only runs about twenty minutes out of every hour. Nothing stops you, if needed, from forcing it to run for forty minutes, or even the full sixty. In a standard fridge, this depends on the heat influx to the evaporator-meaning the warm groceries we want to cool or freeze, and the insulation quality of the cabinet. So you can regulate this quite easily, for instance, with something like a small shutter that exposes part of the insulation in the wall or door, or by opening some vent, or maybe just by leaving the door slightly ajar. And then, on top of the free water for one family member, there will be two more such portions for the other two. Only this time not for free, but heated with the efficiency of a heat pump-meaning three times cheaper than if it were heated the traditional way. And in a worst-case scenario, if hot water is still short, the extra volume can again be boosted by a heating element, like the one in this kettle, but built into our drum. Even with the thermostat you'd need alongside the element, it would cost next to nothing. And there's no need to fear burning out the compressor: as we established, it's one of the most reliable parts of a fridge, especially modern ones. So the benefit is obvious, and the ecological impact too, even if it's not entirely free. It's entirely possible that on a macro level, it's even better than heating water in municipal plants. Food for thought... At the very least, it's no worse than the efficiency of electricity generation... Listen, this is brilliant stuff. Energy transmission without losses, not through wires, but through the air-exactly like Tesla's big secret discovery. Transmission through the air in the form of the air itself,' the repairman grew cheerful. 'Meaning, at the power plant, we heat the air, and here, we cool it.'
'Wait, I just remembered...' the editor smiled, 'how did you put it? Leaving the fridge open? My wife wouldn't love that. She chews me out when I take too long picking something out of the fridge. Now at least I'd have a comeback. There's definitely something to your idea.'
'Of course. Think of the indirect benefits. Both psychological and economic. Refrigerators themselves could be built cheaper. If there are no losses-if all losses are turned into profit-then the walls of the fridge could be made thinner, or out of cheaper material, or out of any material at all, even brick. And thinner walls mean smaller exterior dimensions for the same storage capacity. Naturally, you could use the most basic compressor. The door doesn't seal tight enough? The rubber gasket is cracked or demagnetized? Who cares. It turns out that in terms of energy consumption, the rating of any fridge, even a shoddy one, would be exactly the same-the absolute highest. And that in itself is a contribution to ecology.'
'By the way, what kind of ecological contribution are we talking about?' the editor asked.
'In short, factoring in the heat from domestic air conditioners-which can just as easily be hooked up to the same water drum-and counting only the direct fuel savings, without even considering the cheaper production of the appliances themselves, which is also a massive deal... by a conservative estimate, it turns out we could stop burning three million tons of fossil fuel every single day. Just visualize that. Three million tons every day. That's nine million tons of carbon dioxide not dumped into our poor atmosphere daily. Or, if you prefer, a tenth of the emissions of all global energy, industry, transport, and everything humanity burns in any form, from backyard barbecues to turbojet engines. And that's just the household fridges and AC units that are already sitting there, running. Isn't that wild? Is it even worth mentioning industrial cooling, commercial refrigeration? I think not. But the picture there is just as pathetic, and nowhere near green. By the way, what I'm talking about is bigger than the impact of all existing solar panels, wind turbines, and nuclear reactors combined, the ones making all the headlines. It's precisely this insane number of refrigerators and air conditioners that allows us to speak of them as a global, untapped energy source. Like the new oil, or something...'
'Well, marvelous,' the editor said. 'You've almost convinced me. But can I still have a refrigerator without a water barrel? I mean, tell me yourself, what would I do with it here? I don't take baths in the office.'
'No problem. In fact, the fridge and the heat exchanger should ideally be separate units, if only because of the vastly different lifespans of each device. Remember what we said about equal longevity?'
The editor smiled:
'And I'd have to call a guy like you every time I need to hook them up or disconnect them? Seems like you're securing yourself a job for years to come, aren't you?'
'But people already do exactly that,' the repairman countered, 'when they connect and disconnect the indoor and outdoor units of air conditioners, don't they? And nobody loses sleep over it. It doesn't present an insurmountable technical hurdle, as you can see. The tech is already standard. By the way, we could get rid of those expensive, bulky, and ugly outdoor units that look like warts on buildings altogether, along with the pricey installation and exterior maintenance. Assuming, of course, you aren't interested in using the AC for heating in the winter. Yes, I know that option exists, but that's no excuse not to harvest the heat when the AC is running in cooling mode, which is why it was bought in the first place. With refrigerators, the whole job would be even simpler because, first of all, both units stay inside the house, and second, you wouldn't even necessarily have to link the freon lines. The heat transfer from the fridge to the boiler could be done via dry contact, just like they cool computer processors. Roughly speaking, you just slap a water canister onto this cooling grid. So in the final analysis, it seems I'm putting myself out of a job, not securing one, especially since fridges would break down less often-compressors have an easier time running with water cooling. The only thing truly needed is for appliance manufacturers to redesign the condensers so they can be integrated with home electric boilers. And boiler manufacturers-often the exact same companies-need to tweak their designs so they can receive heat from those condensers. Both changes would cost next to nothing, or absolutely nothing, and I would make it mandatory by international law. Why not? It's happened before, when they banned freons that harmed the ozone layer, and nobody was worse off for it, even if some manufacturers threw a tantrum at first. And the motive there was ecological too. As for you... your right to buy a fridge without heat reclamation remains sacred. The real question is, who violated your right and mine to buy a fridge with heat reclamation? And worse, they did it in a way that we can't even guess our rights are being infringed upon. You might say there's no consumer demand for such a product, but how can demand ever materialize if nobody ever offers the product in the first place? You think that's an accident?'