Testing Compressorless Fridge & An Accident At The Homestead

It was a fine sunny day and I had lots of things planned for the day. But then I had an accident in the morning which changed my plans. I had the baby chicks outside for the day and they seem to love the fresh air and new things to eat. I am trying out a compressorless fridge at the off grid homestead.

In the morning I was riding my garden tractor up a hill when I lost traction. The wheels started spinning on layers of wet leaves. The hill was not very steep but the tractor could not handle the incline on the wet leaves in high gear. So I went to shift down into a lower gear and my brakes failed on me completely.

The garden tractor started to roll backwards downhill and it was picking up speed. I knew this was dangerous and I had to do something. So I slowly steered it slightly to the side to slow it down a bit. This helped some but then it rolled over on me.

As the machine was falling everything was in slow motion. I thought about how many people get killed or badly injured like this every year.

So I tried to jump clear of the falling tractor but my ankle caught between the steering wheel and mower deck arm.

As the garden tractor was starting to crush down on my ankle I managed to wrench it free, tearing off the skin on my upper ankle. Then I fell on the ground with quite some force and landed on my arm. My arm hit right on my healing rib, which broke it again.

Now things have to move a bit slower again at the off grid homestead unfortunately.

I took the chicks out for some fresh air. It was mostly sunny and warm out. They loved the fresh air. I keep them in the pallet wood chicken tractor during the warmer days along with the bantams and the ducklings.

The ducks live in the garden tractor now. I have to put them up into bed at night for their protection against the cold but they are doing fine.

I have a very small compressorless fridge I got at a garage sale about a year ago. I never used it to this day. It was meant to be used in the survival truck camper.

But with warmer weather and not so cold nights I need a place to keep my cold foods. Right now I cannot keep anything cold. It goes bad in a day.

So I fired up the HF generator to run it for a while as it cools down inside. I knew that it would run continuously until it cooled down and this would take a lot of power.

The main problems with the compressorless fridges is that they use 75 watts and run almost all the time. They also do not cool down your food well enough. Most of them only keep the food about 20 degrees F below room temperature. That means that if it is 80 degrees inside the house on a warm summer day then the food in the fridge will be 60 degrees. This is not good.

I am testing it though to see how it works for me. If it works out then I may build a well insulated box around it to help it work and reduce its power consumption.

Follow my daily progress on the path to self sufficiency on my off grid solar homestead.
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