I’m sitting here in my dorm sweating, its about 75 in here and 70 outside. My friend says that its not a good idea to try and cool the room off by leaving my mini-fridges door open. I don’t pay for utilities, theyre included with my rent, and they arent monitored, so power is not an issue. Will doing this cause undue damage to the fridge or cause it to die in less than a year?
It will cause the room to get hotter, not cooler. When the food compartment gets cooler, the condenser coils on the back or bottom of the fridge get hotter. The net effect is that the amount of heat energy in the room increases by the amount of electrical energy the fridge uses.
Same deal with an air conditioner, only the condenser coils are outside, heating the great outdoors instead of the room.
You’re probably overworking the compressor by doing this, but there is a much simpler reason why this scheme won’t work. The heat that gets removed from inside your fridge has to go somewhere. On the back of the fridge is a radiator that dumps that heat out into the room. The same room you would be trying to cool by leaving the door open.