Review
Our old upright fridge/freezer was a Zanussi "ZFC 62/23 FF" bought seven or eight years ago and still working OK.
However, at ~2kWh/day electricity consumption out of a house total of 7kWh, and given that we wanted a bit more freezer space, and given that we'd just put up a solar PV microgeneration system on the roof that our old machine would consume the entire output of, we decided that it was time for an upgrade.
The Zanussi gross fridge and freezer capacities were 175l and 65l respectively (170l and 50l net), and a nominal 1.7kWh/day power consumption (though it was measured to be 2kWh/day with a PM230 plug-in power meter).
We spent a long time on-line and visiting bricks-and-mortar stores looking for the replacement. I like the Zanussi brand in terms of cost and reliability, but we couldn't find anything by them that was suitable, which meant:
- Energy Savings Trust approval, A-or-better rating, and <1kWh/day.
- Over 90l freezer gross capacity and ~170l fridge gross capacity.
- Frost-free freezer and auto-defrost fridge.
- Upright, free-standing, ~60cm width, preferably white.
- Not horribly expensive.
- No silly gadgets that we'd never use, such as high-capacity ice-makers, drinks dispensers, etc.
We didn't like a anything that we saw to start with, and initially hoped that we might find something in the £350 range. We checked out John Lewis and Waitrose, Boots, Currys/Dixons, Argos, various on-line price-comparison sites (though I loathe them), etc, etc, over the course of a few weeks.
Very few sites allowed us to sort or filter by energy consumption nor in particular by Energy Savings Trust approval, and none by capacity, which is daft, and would have saved much time and effort. Descriptions and ratings were largely consistent and clear, though Argos claimes one of their appliances would use 0.88kWh/year, which would be miraculous! Suppliers: please allow sensible sorting and filtering!
The John Lewis Direct site, from which we bought in the end, was nothing special but it worked, and John Lewis in general is a well-run ethical company that we often use (disclaimer: and for which I worked part-time as a teenager). Apart from anything else we were happy to let them take away our old fridge for recycling, trusting them not to fly-tip it for example! Their £9 disposal charge was a little higher than some others', but the delivery charge was zero, and the appliance price of £524 OK.
You'll gather that we couldn't get frost-free and 90l+ freezer capacity and a decent fridge capacity and a brand with a good reputation for £350, never mind with a supplier that we'd dealt with before and trusted. So the JL and Siemens brands were very helpful in that respect, and being able to look at the Siemens appliance in our local John Lewis department store in Kingston was also confidence-building.
The Siemens gross fridge and freezer capacities are 186l and 109l respectively (186l and 88l net), and a nominal 0.75kWh/day power consumption. As of the first week of use I have not yet observed a consumption as low as the specified 0.75kWh/day (though not over 1kWh/day either), which is disappointing, though may still be 'settling down time'.
One thing that the extra freezer space will be used for is about-to-expire supermarket baragins that loss-lead rather than land-fill, and bulkier items such as bread.