storing a ladder between two freezers?

[Wade Lippman]

I have a 6' aluminum ladder and no convenient place to keep it.
I also have a fridge and a freezer in my basement. One says it needs 3" of space around it and the other 2". They are 5" apart.
That is a great place to stash the ladder.
It seems to me that unless they are both on at the same time, they only need to be 3" apart, and if they are on at the same time, the extra heat will make the convection work even better, so they still only need to be 3" apart. And while the ladder will restrict air flow a bit, it shouldn't be much. So it is fine.
Am I rationalizing a stupid idea, or is the ladder okay there?

466682

[Myk Rian]

Don't worry about it. The ladder has lots of big holes in it. It won't block air flow.

[Doug Garson]

and aluminum is a good conductor so that will help dissipate the heat. It would be interesting to feel the ladder after the fridge or freezer has run for a while and see if it even heats up enough to notice.

[Rollie Meyers]

A lot of upright freezers have the condenser coils spot welded to the inside of the appliance cabinet, they need airflow to dissipate heat, if a appliance does not have a coil on the back or fan forced coil on the bottom by the compressor, the cabinet is radiating the waste heat. For that reason I would not do it.

[Kev Williams]

Let's see- just guessing at dims, but lets say that latter is 72" tall x 4" wide x 16" across-
that's 4608 cubic inches of air space-

If the sides of the ladder are 72x4x1", that's 288 cubic inches,
and if the rungs, lets say 8 of them, are 16x2x1" = 32ci, x8 rungs = 256ci, plus 288ci= 544 cubic inches total-

544ci / 4608ci = 11% of the available air space is blocked.

This means that the approx. 5.00" air space between the freezers with that ladder in place is reduced to a 4.45" air space...

Seems totally insignificant to me...

Filling the 5" space between the freezers with fiberglass insulation, that's different ;)