Cohousing-L Mailing List: Refrigerators/ovens in individuals' houses

[RAYGASSER (RAYGASSER]

At EcoVillage at Ithaca, we're trying to decide about exactly what 
refrigerators and ovens we'll be putting in our individual kitchens.
The kitchens are designed to be identical in all 30 households (with
households between 1 and 6 members), because it makes a big difference
in cost. We'd like to do the same with the appliances, but it's looking
difficult....

Biggest problem seems to be the refrigerators. Some want to get by with
5 or 6 cubic ft (or possibly none at all!), and this would be a real
hardship on a family with 2 adults & 4 kids. I currently have a 23 cf
in my (non-coho) house, and figure we could make do with 14-16 cf. The
space allotted in each kitchen will be the same. Common dining several
nights a week certainly will make a difference in how much space we need,
but we're not sure how much. Have any of you "already-moved-ins" found that
you've got too much/too little refrigerator space in your unit? What sizes
are you using?

Next issue with the refreigerators is efficiency. I've heard about
SunFrost refrigerators and claims of tremendous energy savings (like
less that 1/5 a normal fridge), but have also heard that those claims
are bogus, based on a 15 degree freezer temp, instead of the std 5 degree,
etc., and the costs are exorbitant. Any experience with SunFrost (I keep
wanting to type: SunSoft!!!!!!!!)

Ovens: My personal pref is for a combination microwave/convection oven,
about 1.4 cf, tabletop, because I don't want to lose a lot of cabinet
space with a "full-size" normal+convection oven, and we'd be using some
counter- or shelf-space for a nuke anyway. Anybody have either of those?
We hardly ever use our "normal" oven (we now own s separate table-top
convection & separate nuke, and a small toaster oven), except for the
bodacious gingerbread villages we make around **the winter holidays**
(with apologies to that thread), and we'd probably use the Common House
super-oven for those.

Thanks for the help...

Ray Gasser, EcoVillage at Ithaca
raygasser [at] delphi.com