Fitting a fridge

May 22, 2024 12:57 AM

I want to buy a fridge. It will fit the available space, but it will be tight. Too tight?

I just moved into a new house and there's a wooden cupboard built around the space for the fridge.

The space is 1720mm high, 680mm wide, and 600mm deep. The fridge I want to buy is 1700mm high, 600mm wide, and 600mm deep - so it would fit very snugly in the available space.

However! The manual for this fridge advises that you need a 50mm margin around each side to allow for adequate ventilation.

Is this margin requirement one of those "excessive caution" rules or one of those "you really don't want to ignore this" rules?

posted by Paragon to Home & Garden (14 answers total)

"placing the refrigerator next to wall spaces that are too close in proximity can hamper airflow and prevent the heated coils from cooling down." YmmMV
posted by HearHere at 1:36 AM on May 22

Don't do it. Fridges barely last these days and you don't want to do anything to make the compressor work harder.
posted by MagnificentVacuum at 2:50 AM on May 22

it will get hot and heat up your kitchen badly. The 50mm margin is a minimum.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 2:59 AM on May 22

The width is barely-adequate in that you won't be able to pull it out again unless it sticks out partly, but the depth will be killer for most standard fridges anyway unless you don't mind it sticking out from that space by at least 5 cm, 10 is better, because that's where the fridge dumps the heat. And adequate airflow on top where the heat rises - again I'd be comfortable with 10cm there.

(Source: designing a custom fridge space for my own cramped kitchen. I went with 70x70 plus open to the ceiling - turns out I now have a cat who bounces up there off a chair back and goes very smug about being Tall where his brothers won't bother him.)
posted by I claim sanctuary at 3:29 AM on May 22 [2 favorites]

Is the top of the space closed? As in, is the actual ceiling height the height you've put above? If not, and you could remove the top part of the boxing, that would provide a lot of ventilation. Our new kitchen has roughly the same width and depth, but above the fridge there is a big void (covered at the front) which means the heat can go up there and dissipate, allowing the back to cool.
posted by In Your Shell Like at 5:19 AM on May 22 [1 favorite]

We're renovating our kitchen right now, and buying new fridge and freezer, and this has come up in conversations with our architect and builder. You do need the space around it for ventilation, or it could damage the systems. But you also need to consider the space necessary for the door to open fully (to 90*) and the additional space necessary to accommodate the handle when the door is in the fully open position.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:44 AM on May 22 [3 favorites]

Anecdote: I bought a fridge whose listed width was about 10 mm less than our space, but it physically didn't fit because the sides bulged out slightly. The delivery guys were miraculously able to wedge it in only by wiggling it in so that the walls physically compressed the . So even if you didn't need extra space for ventilation, that specific fridge might not physically fit.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 6:07 AM on May 22 [1 favorite]

Unless you’re in a similar situation to In Your Shell Like I would advise strongly against this. The 80mm at the back would be sufficient to dump the heat, but only if the heat has someplace to go. A 20mm slot at the top is not nearly large enough.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 6:32 AM on May 22

Our fridge has about 20mm clearance on all sides and it tended to struggle to clear the heat on hot days, until we put some holes in the panel above it to increase airflow and now it is better. So I wouldn't risk it with only 20mm on the top unless you are able to increase the airflow up there. My understanding is the sides are less important.
posted by ssg at 7:57 AM on May 22

If you ever need warranty service, and the manufacturer finds out that you didn't follow these instructions, there might be issues.
posted by amtho at 9:00 AM on May 22

Sacrifice the cabinet space above the refrigerator,
install a thermostatically controlled fan .
posted by hortense at 10:37 AM on May 22 [2 favorites]

With my fridge, we cut out the bottom of the shelving above the fridge but left the cabinet doors there. We lost the use of that storage space, but got a lot of ventilation. We also had our cabinet guy who was really a furniture maker by trade, create ventilation slits in the sides so that there would be some airflow. It looked good and worked really well.

We also considered moving the condensing motor. It was a large commercial refrigerator. It was noisier than a home fridge. One option was to move the condenser motor to the basement below the kitchen. That would have been step 2 if step one (above) did not work.

What did the homeowner before you do? What size fridge did they have in it? Did it work/last?
posted by JohnnyGunn at 12:05 PM on May 22 [2 favorites]

As I mentioned in last week's help-new-fridge thread, we went through the new fridge process last year. The cabinetry has a hole that was designed for a ... fridge that no longer exists. In examining it, I discovered that the previous owner had actually chiseled off some of the trim (like a quarter inch) to get the (now old) fridge to fit in. So it was the tightest of fits on the top, with about 1.5 inches on each side, and good space in the back. That fridge lasted precisely 20 years (as did all the other kitchen appliances, but that's another story) which implies that the airflow was adequate.

When we discovered that a new fridge for that volume would be an impossible unicorn, I bit the bullet and paid for a trusted cabinetry guy to come modify that overhead cabinet to "raise the roof", as it were. We raised it so that I had a decent selection again of fridges to choose from. It wasn't cheap, and if you're a renter this isn't an option, unless you want to make a case for it with your landlord (i.e. split the cost).

IANYRG (refrigerator guy), but the space on the back is the most important. You don't want those coils right up against the wall, but just an inch is fine. Next in importance is the space on the top, and again an inch is fine -- ours is 1.5" but then only 0.5" right at the front trim. The sides are the least important (IMO) and our fridge is nearly an "interference fit" as the mechanical engineers would say: I now have the fridge feet adjusted to fit the space without touching the sides, but you can literally just barely stick a sheet of paper in the gap :)

So, in summary, you need space in the back and the top, and not on the sides. Sez this random guy on the internet.

Pro tip:if your fridge has an air intake at the bottom that you can clean, clean it regularly!
posted by intermod at 12:59 PM on May 22 [2 favorites]

You probably thought of this already, but be sure to measure at different points of the space. Sometimes things are not perfectly square.
posted by dum spiro spero at 1:07 PM on May 22