"fridge" - how does it work?

[fuzzzbutt]

I know from the comments it is possible to make a freezer-room. For some reason it does not work for me. Can someone please be nice and post a screenshot or give me a little more detail? My dudes will be thankfull ;-)

[Diarmuhnd]

others have said 1 full pallet of ice jugs per 5 tile Room.
others have said to build a fridge room under a mountain.

I've not yet reached the point where my orphans could spend the time trying to build a fridge yet, so I've not tested anything others have said, yet.

Also, not sure if anyone has posted additional info on fridge building yet. I may have missed some posts.

Good luck, let us know how it goes.

[dissent]

I hollow out a 2x3 nook in the mountain, put a straw door and straw window for access and light, put a jug pallet with six jugs full of water in one corner, add a pantry shelves (which almost fills up the floor space) and then leave. On day 2 or 3 of winter, the jugs will freeze and the temp in the room will drop to -6C. Congrats, you have a cold room.

In spring, the jugs don't thaw. Just leave them there and the cold room works from then on at a temp of -6C. I've been through two summers with my two cold rooms and neither one thawed. I've now built a third for this winter. It'll hold my winter food stocks. When those are depleted, it will stand as a spare cold room, in case one of the other two thaws.

[dissent]

Once you have one running, you can use it to start others. My three are all inside the mountain and share common walls. I made the third one in mid-fall, before it was freezing. I put the jug pallet and jugs in the new cold room, then opened vents to the two existing cold rooms. They quickly chilled the new room to -6C, freezing the jugs. So I created a cold room in fall, long before the onset of winter.

I'm hoping this arrangement will also prevent mishaps with melting. Each of the cold rooms has vents to the other two cold rooms. So they share the temp which should ideally equalise out at -6C for all three rooms. If one of the rooms develops a leak, I'm hoping the other two will re-freeze the jugs to re-establish the cold room conditions.

[Philtre]

Originally posted by wookiepaw:

hm... I already cleared all the mountains in my area. might explain why my freezers never work ;-)

You can make a freezer in a normal room, you just don't get the bonus cooling effect. So you will need more ice for the same size room.

[GamerGirlDK]

What sjould be in the pantry? Raw meat, raw fish, berries, mushrooms?

[dissent]

Anything you like. Everything keeps indefinitely in there. I have developed a strategy where I don't do any special winter food collection. I catch excess fish every day, eat some and store the rest as my winter stock. Now on day 10 of winter, I'm still eating cooked fish I harvested in summer and fall, and it's fresh as a daisy. The only degradation it suffered (1 or 2%) was from hauling it from the lake to the cold room. I'm at the end of winter 3 now and still have meat that I smoked in the fall of year 1. It's still fine.

There is no need to store dried mushrooms anymore. Everything is dried mushrooms when you have a cold room. Food spoilage is eliminated and the smoker becomes redundant. In fact, smoking meat and fish is a disadvantage because it reduces the nutrition by 1/3. Store it fresh and cook it when you need it. The only downside of that is that pantry storage slots for fresh food are less than for dried/smoked - 20 versus 100.

[GamerGirlDK]

How do you prevent the people from using the jugs? I triede setting it to false but they still drank from one when it was still water

[dissent]

The key is to have the cold rooms well away from where people ordinarily use water - for example to fill water dippers or bathtubs, or to water crops. I have my crop area right next to my main homestead. Both are served by two jug pallets, each with six jugs, right next to the well which is close to the homestead front door and the crop fields. So for all their daily needs, there is fresh water available nearby. My cold rooms are some distance away, so they never need to go there to get water.

Also be wary about thawing jugs in winter. One day, I was constantly running short for my bathtubs and water dipper. So, in frustration, I clicked on water jug about six times at the stone fieplace to get them to thaw a bunch. They ended up going and getting a couple from the cold rooms and thawing them too. It's not a biggie because they replace them on the cold room pallet where the jugs refreeze quickly. But it's something to be aware of. Only thaw two or so jugs at a time in winter.

Another thing to be aware of is people storing ice jugs which are near empty. I have 18 ice jugs cooling my three cold rooms, one pallet of six for each room, but the inventory screen informs me that I only have 1466 ice on hand. There should be 1800 so several of the jugs are only partially full. It hasn't resulted in a thaw yet but might conceivably.

It's a real nightmare trying to get jugs filled fully all the time. I'm not sure how to get around it. My cold rooms have worked for more than two full summers now without incident so I'm not concerned but would also like to rectify it if I can. I think what I may do is to place an extra pallet of six in one of the cold rooms. As all three are connected by vents, they should share heat - or cold in this case. So an extra pallet will just give me a bit of extra insurance against a thaw, even if not all jugs are full of ice.

[dissent]

Another option I've been considering is to physically wall in the jug pallets. So I'd create an area of 4 or 6 tiles (2x2 or 2x3), fill it with pallets, let all the jugs freeze, then wall it in and vent the cold to adjoining cold rooms. That way, workers can't reach the pallets even if they want to.

I don't know if vented cold will be as efficient as a pallet in the same room but I suspect it will be. Vents seem pretty darn efficient at heat exchange.

[AiLinon / Соловейко в]

My freezer, -6 C in the summer
http://joxi.ru/VrwX5KbtoDQXzm?d=1

[Flysfree]

when you reach the stage there will be wells that i keep in areas that need constant fresh water so in winter i never then have to use to ice from the freezer room. For instance i have a well next to the garden area with stockpile for empty jugs,they then take a jug fill it do the watering. i have one at the front of the base so they take from that for anything in the kitchen or if they need a drink and a 3rd well next to the clothing crafting room so if they need to for furs etc they take direct from there so far it seems to work quite well

[Diarmuhnd]

Originally posted by wookiepaw:

thanks guys, you helped out a lot. i did it!!!!!

Congratulations

[dissent]

OK. I finally managed to get all my ice jugs filled to 100%. It's quite simple to do. If any jug is at less than 100, click on it to remove it from the pallet, then block the slot immediately or else a worker will just replace it back in the pallet. With no slot free, the worker will take the partially full ice jug and tip into any other non-full jugs in the area. Once the jug is empty, he will take it to the well/lake and refill it. Then he'll place it in the food stockpile area. This assumes that you have as many jugs as pallet slots, which is essential.

Once I see a 100 jug filled with water in the food stockpile, I unblock the slot on the cold room pallet. A worker will drop off the now-full jug, it freezes in short order et voila, you now have full ice jugs. It took a bit of toing and froing but I managed to get them all done. So now my 18 tiles of cold room (3 rooms each of 2x3) are cooled by 2400 units of ice.

[dissent]

So I got my sealed cold room up and running:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2840236470

It uses four jug pallets to chill 16 tiles of floor space, 6 tiles for each of the cold rooms and then the 4 tiles that the pallets are standing on. All areas are cross-vented so cold generated anywhere can reach anywhere. If one of the sealed coolant units starts to thaw, hopefully the other one will re-freeze it. And if the temp rises in one of the cold rooms, the other should help to chill it.

I've put in the pantries in blueprint mode to show how the access points aren't blocked. Having 4 pantries chilled in just 16 tiles floor space, with the coolant units sealed so workers can't tamper with them or take jugs for thawing, should be quite secure imo.

[Great Sage Equal of Heaven]

Oh that's a neat design. I like the separation between the food storage and the ice