I don’t think the hot side gets hot enough for it to be a particularly useful heat, but it does help heat the space that the fridge is in. The rest of the fridge is cooling the surrounding space though, via whatever heat leaks in through the insulation and particularly whenever you open it.
I’ve sometimes wondered whether somehow having the hot side go outside (like with a heat pump) would make sense during the summer, so it acts as part of the air conditioning.
> I’ve sometimes wondered whether somehow having the hot side go outside (like with a heat pump) would make sense during the summer, so it acts as part of the air conditioning.
It would, but then the house needs to be build around the fridge. No moving the fridge to clean behind it. No trading it in for a different model. When it breaks you have to get a technician out for a few hours labor - there is no option to go to home depot and bring home a new one.
I don’t imagine it being quite that inflexible if it became popular, but a replacement would need to be hooked up to refrigerant lines like a mini-split system. That’s going to be a more expensive install or replacement.
It would be quite inflexible now when it’s custom and there’s no standard for such things.
It would have to be - the size of many of the parts need to be matched, so any change means a lot of changes (either that or the system is less efficient than what we have today). Also refrigerants keep changing as we discover less harmful ones, and often they are incompatible with the old so tear out the old pipes which otherwise should last a lifetime just because they are contaminated (or the wrong size)
I’ve sometimes wondered whether somehow having the hot side go outside (like with a heat pump) would make sense during the summer, so it acts as part of the air conditioning.