Not applicable.
1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to refrigerated food and drink storage units, and in particular, to compact drawer refrigerators in which the storage space is defined by one or more pull-out door drawers.
2. Description of the Related Art
Refrigerators and coolers for the cold storage of food and beverage items are well known. Many conventional refrigerators and beverage coolers have one or more doors that are hinged to the front side of the cabinet. Food and beverages are ordinarily stored on shelves in the cabinet and the door(s) as well as in slide out crisper drawers near the bottom of the cabinet. This is common for industrial and residential refrigerators and beverage coolers as either full-size standup units or compact, under-cabinet units.
Drawer refrigerators are also well known in which the doors are replaced by pull-out drawers having bins in which the food is stored. Drawer refrigerators can be preferred in certain applications, such as low, under-cabinet applications, because the food items can be slid out of the cabinet in the drawer and thereby be accessed more easily. Often such drawer refrigerators have two, or possibly more, pull-out drawers that are arranged side by side or vertically stacked one above the other so that not all of the items are stored in the same drawer.
One problem with stacked drawer refrigerators is that there is considerable temperature variance between the two drawers, such that one drawer, typically the lower drawer, gets colder than the other. This can frustrate the user because, for example, in order for the upper drawer to be at the desired temperature, the lower drawer may be at a temperature that is colder than it should be for beverages or other items. This can be avoided by using two separate evaporator assemblies for each drawer, but at considerable expense. Or, the refrigerator can have a single evaporator, likely at the bottom of the unit, and an active airflow control assembly, such as including movably louvers and an air mover. Again, however, this adds considerable expense to the unit as well as occupies additional space in the interior which could otherwise be used for cold storage.
Another common issue with drawer refrigerators (with any number or arrangement of drawers) is the efficient allocation of space, that is how to maximize storage capacity within standard height, width and depth dimensions while keeping the items easily accessible. This is a particularly difficult issue to address in drawer refrigerators because of their inherent lack of shelving, unlike conventional hinged door refrigerators, which makes it easy to store items vertically above one another without making them difficult to access, as would be the case if the items were stacked directly on top of each other.
Accordingly, an improved drawer refrigerator with more uniform cooling and improved storage capacity and accessibility features is desired.
The present invention provides a divider fence for a drawer refrigerator and a drawer refrigerator having a divider fence for adjustably compartmentalizing the interior storage space of a refrigerator drawer.
Specifically, in one aspect the invention is a divider fence having first and second dividers for extending between respective first and second pair of drawer walls. The first and second dividers being coupled at a hub, which in a locked position inhibits sliding of the first divider with respect to the second divider and in an unlocked position allows sliding of the first divider with respect to the second divider.
In another aspect, the invention provides a drawer refrigerator having a cabinet, a drawer with front, rear and opposite side walls slidably mounted to the cabinet, and a divider fence having first and second dividers. The first divider extends between the front and rear walls and the second divider extends between the side walls. The first and second dividers are coupled at a hub, which in a locked position inhibits sliding of at least one of the dividers with respect to the other divider and in an unlocked position allows sliding of the at least one divider.
The hub can be locked by a locking member mounted to the hub at different positions when in the locked and unlocked positions. The locking member then inhibits sliding of the first divider when in the locked position by contacting the first divider. The locking member can be rotatably mounted to the hub, such as in the form of a threaded turn knob.
The dividers can be elongated rods. End pieces mounted can be mounted to ends of the elongated rods. The end pieces can have flat surfaces for contacting the drawer walls. The hub can have open-ended through openings receiving the rods. The openings can be disposed essentially perpendicular to one another. Each divider can have a pair of spaced apart elongated rods, which overlap in a longitudinal dimension of the hub.
The divider fence can thus be used to divide and compartmentalize the interior storage space of a refrigerator drawer. The size of the compartments can be adjusted readily by turning the locking knob and sliding one or more of the dividers as desired. The dividers can be slid near perpendicular walls of the drawer bin or removed completely when there is no need to divide up the storage space.
These and still other advantages of the invention will be apparent from the detailed description and drawings. What follows is a preferred embodiment of the present invention. To assess the full scope of the invention the claims should be looked to as the preferred embodiment is not intended as the only embodiment within the scope of the invention.
Referring now to
Each of the pull-out drawers 26 and 28 have a front door panel 34 with a handle 36 along a top edge and which is designed to be fit with an overlay panel (not shown) matching the cabinetry where the unit is installed. Details of the handle construction and the overlay panel attachment can be found in co-owned pending application Ser. No. 10/076,746, filed Feb. 14, 2002. Attached to the door panels 34 are drawer bins 38 and 39 of slightly different configuration between the respective upper 26 and lower 28 drawers. The upper drawer 26 has deeper opposite side walls 40 joined at their bottom edges to a bottom wall 42 and at their back edges by a vented rear wall 44 that extends only about half the height of the side walls 40 so that its top edge is set down from the top edges of the side walls 40. Two, preferably plastic, runners 46 are attached, preferably with adhesive, onto the top edges of the side walls 40 to allow a bottle bin 48 to slide thereon.
In particular, with reference to
As shown in
Referring to
With reference to
As shown in
The refrigerator is cooled by a generally conventional refrigeration system, shown schematically in
As is known, the compressor 106 draws refrigerant from the evaporator 100 and accumulator 104 and discharges the refrigerant under increased pressure and temperature to the condenser 108. The hot refrigerant gas entering the condenser 108 is cooled by air circulated by a fan 116 (see
The single naturally convective evaporator 100 extends along the rear wall at the inside of the cabinet so as to be adjacent both upper and lower drawer cavities 22 and 24. The horizontal partition 20, which divides the interior of the cabinet in two, is designed to divide or partition the evaporator 100 in two parts, preferably so that more (about ⅔) of the evaporator 100 is located in the upper drawer cavity 22 than in the lower drawer cavity 24, and to restrict air flow between the cavities 22 and 24 so that chilled air from the evaporator 100 is essentially trapped in each and segregated from the other drawer cavity so that the cabinet has a nearly uniform temperature at each drawer cavity 22 and 24. The partition helps prevent cold air from settling near the bottom of the cabinet and prevents the temperature in the lower drawer from being substantially cooler than that in the upper drawer. The vented rear walls of the bottle bin 48 and the upper drawer bin 38 also allow cool air from the evaporator to reach the food in the upper drawer 26, further aiding in cooling the upper part of the cabinet and equalizing the temperature in the drawers. While zero temperature differential between the drawers is desired, a five or six degree temperature variance, for example three degrees plus or minus from the target temperature, is generally an acceptable working temperature differential. Empirical tests have found that maximum temperature differences between the two drawers is 2.4° F. when the external ambient temperature is approximately 90° F. and a target cooling temperature is about 36-38° F., with the mean temperature differential being even better at 1.2° F. Because the test results may vary depending on the temperature of the food inside the drawers, for consistency the test were conducted with the refrigerator completely unloaded. Individual units tested under the same conditions achieved a nearly zero degree differential, for example 0.4° F., which is expected to improve and be at or very near zero with lower ambient temperatures (near 70° F.) common in homes and business environments. A primary benefit of this uniform temperature afforded by the refrigerator of the present invention is that, in non-freezer applications, the temperature can be set to a target temperature which approaches freezing, for example 34-36° F. with the actual temperatures within the drawer at the high end being sufficiently cool and the lower end actual temperatures remaining above freezing.
The refrigeration system is operated and controlled by a control unit 200 mounted in the interior of the upper drawer 26 (preferably in the left front corner). The control unit 200, shown in
Thus, the present invention provides a pull-out drawer type refrigerator with several features to improve ease of use and functionality. The sliding bottle bin provides extra storage for wine or like bottles without hampering access to the items stored in the associated drawer bin. The side access compartment also provides additional storage space in a pull out bin that is easily accessible from either side or the top of the associated drawer. The adjustable fence quickly and easily compartmentalizes the drawer bins for segregated storage of items and can be used to secure taller items in place to prevent tipping. The size of the compartments can be adjusted easily by turning the locking knob and sliding the dividers as desired. The dividers can be slid near perpendicular walls of the drawer bin or removed completely when there is no need to divide up the storage space. Finally, the invention provides for nearly constant and equal temperatures at the drawer bins of multiple pull-out drawers using a single partitioned naturally convective evaporator.
It should be appreciated that merely a preferred embodiment of the invention has been described above. However, many modifications and variations to the preferred embodiment will be apparent to those skilled in the art, which will be within the spirit and scope of the invention. Therefore, the invention should not be limited to the described embodiment. To ascertain the full scope of the invention, the following claims should be referenced.
This application is a continuation of application Ser. No. 11/942,440, filed Nov. 19, 2007, now abandoned which is a continuation of application Ser. No. 11/461,104, filed Jul. 31, 2006, issuing as U.S. Pat. No. 7,296,433 on Nov. 20, 2007, which is a continuation of application Ser. No. 10/665,835, filed Sep. 19, 2003, which issued as U.S. Pat. No. 7,082,783 on Aug. 1, 2006.
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Number | Date | Country | |
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20090133434 A1 | May 2009 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
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Parent | 11942440 | Nov 2007 | US |
Child | 12364326 | US | |
Parent | 11461104 | Jul 2006 | US |
Child | 11942440 | US | |
Parent | 10665835 | Sep 2003 | US |
Child | 11461104 | US |