Freezers

[Patchouli]

Do you consider a freezer an essential part of your food storage, or are you working on acquiring one?
Have you almost always had a freezer?
What do you prefer, upright or chest?
Particular brands that are good, ones that aren't?
I had an upright about 10 years ago. We used it for freezing fruit, veggies, and meat, when we would get good deals on bulk purchases.

 

[timmie]

i have 3. plan on down sizing to 2 this winter ,1 if i can . i prefer to have most of our food canned or dehydrated so if we lose power for any reason we still have good food ,and we know whats in it. i prefer a chest.

 

[hiwall]

We have one small one and it is always pretty full. It is a chest style. We could run it off our small solar setup maybe if required. Or run the generator once a day to keep the contents cold enough.

 

[joel]

Yes!
I have always had one, as a child & all my married life(35 y).
Chest, up right lose all the cold when you open it.
I have the 6/8 foot one, that movies use to hide bodies in.
No, that is not why I have one, besides 55 gallon drum of lime works better( how I know this is a different thread).
dehydrate foods is cheaper, Freeze dry is better, but cost more.
Put dry goods in freezer for 24 hours will kill insect eggs.

 

[NannyPatty]

I have an upright and I prefer it over the chest style. Kenmore is a good product. Mine is well over 10 years old. It is frost free, but I do have defrost once a year because the drain plug freezes up athen there is a sheet of ice on the bottom. The upright is easier access in my opinion.

 

[Bacpacker]

We have a ~15 cf chest freezer and a upright of similar size. Upright is only 5-6 yo and does a good job. Chest is 15 or more yo and has always performed well. Chest freezer holds much more, upright is much easier to access.
We are trying to can and dehydrate more. But I also have a generator and store enough gas to keep the freezers cold till we could process everything in them. We do plan to get a freeze dryer at some point and will probably get rid of one freezer then.

 

[Meerkat]

We have a chest freezer. With low amps in case we have to go solar. Had it about 3 years and so far it works good.
It is a Danby energy star. 1.2 Amps,115 volts.Not frost free, has to be defrosted but that saves energy and what we wanted. 4L, 2W,30D.
No way do I want to be without ice in hot weather. Small fan and cooler for cool air.

 

[joel]

To be fair we have two frig, one is an up right with a small side freezer, the other is a giant french door with freezer drawer under french doors.
All are packed & the chest is full, two deer & part of a wild hog, rest is vegetables from the garden.

 

[MoBookworm1957]

Have chest freezer.
About half empty right now,but next month will be full with meat.
Rotated most everything to refr. freezer and it's stuffed.
Have fruits,vegetables in chest freezer,but will add meat next month as budget allows.

 

[Meerkat]

Every now and then a storm knocks power out,like last month it happened a couple times for awhile.
So we hooked up generator for fans and freezer. Played cards by oil lamp . No way could I stand that kind of heat without a fan or cool air. We keep our AC on 80 to 85 so we don't get too use to it. Use fan in house and on porch.

 

[Caribou]

I think a chest freezer is more efficient and better in a power outage as you don't dump all the cold air every time I open the door. I tend to buy uprights as the footprint is smaller and access is better. We bought an upright when we moved in. Then we bought an over/under fridge/freezer for the kitchen and moved the old side by side out to the garage. We just picked up a medium size upright that is currently empty but is waiting for friends to come back with a moose.

 

[Terri9630]

We have an upright and 2 chest freezers. We emptied one of the chest freezers this morning and its going to be moved to the other house.

 

[Caribou]

If the power goes out cover your freezer/fridge with blankets to add insulation and keep your food frozen longer. When the power comes back on or you fire up the generator take the blankets off as most freezers use the skin as a radiation panel to rid themselves of the heat.

 

[Sewingcreations15]

We have 2 upright 400 odd litre upright freezers due to DH's back and my back problems it is not practical for us to have chest freezers. We have 1 for meat and dairy and the other one holds near on a years worth of frozen vegetables picked and blanched and frozen from the gardens.

Due to the fact we are in a small workers cottage we have no room for canning or dehydrating equipment so for the moment freezer preservation is the only option until we build our home. We do also keep a lot of commercially tinned and dehydrated foods here and will work on making our own sun dehydrator being in the land of sun, drought and flooding rains.

 

[PopPopT]

We have one small chest freezer, one medium chest freezer and one large upright freezer. It bothers me that they're all electric and I don't have a backup system to keep them running other than a crappy generator. That's something I'd like to change. I really would like to get at least a small solar setup going that would be capable of running at least the freezers, and perhaps a little more stuff besides. I do have a wonderful roof on the house that faces in exactly the right direction and has a clear line of site except the very first morning light, which isn't blocked for long. It wouldn't be too difficult to start out with maybe 2,000 to maybe 2,500 watts of panels. That would make me a lot more comfortable about having freezers.

 

[The Lazy L]

We have one small chest freezer, one medium chest freezer and one large upright freezer. It bothers me that they're all electric ... It wouldn't be too difficult to start out with maybe 2,000 to maybe 2,500 watts of panels. That would make me a lot more comfortable about having freezers.

I watched another online advertisement for a solar "generator". My oldest sister is 99% convinced this is the best thing since sliced bread. The "generator" is a 2000 watt computer UPS with USB and 12 VDC ports added. Ad doesn't state the size of the solar panel, from the size shown I figure 100 Watt. That means 20 hours of direct sunlight to recharge a 100% completed UPS. Average deep freeze draws 200 Watts. 10 hours and the UPS is dead and it takes 20 hours to recharge.

In real life I don't think a deep freeze needs 200 Watts per hour. Dependent on outside temperature, how full the deep freeze is and how often the door is open. Also in really life a UPS should not be discharge below 50%. Which means instead of 2000 Watt UPS you have a 1000 Watt UPS and 10 hours of sunlight to recharge.

 

[PopPopT]

Those kinds of advertisements get me a little perturbed, Lazy L. They imply that they can do a whole lot more than they really can. Sure, even a tiny solar "generator" is useful for maybe charging your cell phone, maybe even an LED light or two for a while. But anything substantial, they're not gonna work.

I was kinda thinking of maybe 6 to 8 quite large (like maybe 3 or 4 ft wide, 4 or 5 feet long, can't remember exactly, maybe 300 or so watts each) with something a little closer to a half dozen golf cart batteries and a decent sine wave inverter. That's still pretty small when you start adding in normal household stuff but it would be enough to get by with for many of us if we were careful about it. It would definitely run the freezers, maybe a few lights and some basic electronics, and be able to do it on a continuing basis.

People have a tendency to way underestimate the amount of electricity they use. Having lived in an RV on one single 20 amp extension cord was a bit of a juggling act at times. But we did it, for a while. And there wasn't a whole lot we went without. We did have to be mindful of what was being used and when. We could even run the microwave... if we shut everything else down, LOL! I suspect a small solar setup would be similar.

I might be preaching to the choir, here, hope I haven't droned on too much.

 

[The Lazy L]

...
I was kinda thinking of maybe 6 to 8 quite large (like maybe 3 or 4 ft wide, 4 or 5 feet long, can't remember exactly, maybe 300 or so watts each) with something a little closer to a half dozen golf cart batteries and a decent sine wave inverter. ...

I like the way you are thinking!