Advice on buying small chest freezers?

I need to buy a smallish (4-6 cu ft) chest (not upright) freezer, but I don't know what brands or stores to hit to do comparison shopping. Sears is all out of the small chests, and I want to get one in the next week or so.

Any suggestions? I'm willing to go to small appliance stores, big box chains...wherever they've got the goods.

-crrsh

HI,

I always begin with Consumer Reports to see what they recommend.

FYI - I found a freezer via Consumer Reports I could not find in stores. It was available at Abt via their website. They ordered it with delivery within 10 days without any special fees.

Regards,

I'm interested in this as well I know I want to put it in my unheated garage, so it needs to NOT be frostfree. I'm also told that chest oriented freezers become black holes. A friend who uses hers well suggests the upright kind.

leek wrote:I'm interested in this as well I know I want to put it in my unheated garage, so it needs to NOT be frostfree. I'm also told that chest oriented freezers become black holes. A friend who uses hers well suggests the upright kind.

Upright freezers are far less energy-efficient than chest freezers, if you care about that sort of thing.

Uprights also require constant defrosting to get the coils clear, according to a caterer friend. And, every time you open the door, the cold air flushes out. For the size I'm looking for, and what I'll use it for (stocks, larger cuts of meat, soups, etc.),I'm not too concerned about the 'black hole' effect.

I like my small upright because:

1) It's like extra counter space. We put the microwave on top of it.
2) Easier to find stuff on shelves.

We do have to defrost it, but only like once or twice a year. Not a real big drawback.

Nancy

If you want to *really* keep stuff frozen, long-term, safely, buy a chest freezer. But there are minuses.

I've owned three chest freezers: two huge Amanas, one which died slowly after 20 yrs of service; and the other which remained in a household I disassociated myself from. From what I understand, it is happily working into its 18th yr.

I now own a cheapie, 7-cu-ft Haier from WalMart. It works perfectly well, and has done for 5 yrs.

If you wrap things well (think: Original Saran, if you can get it), and turn this sucker down below 0°F, they'll keep for quite a while.

Minus, Big Minus: chest freezers are, indeed, black holes (even if painted white). There is only one way to get around this: the owner-operator must not only be organized, but have a way to physically organize the chest itself. Baskets, used in a disciplined and orderly fashion, will work. So also will good record-keeping.

I have never had the slightest success at freezerly discipline, organization nor order. Still, the benefits outweigh the odd bit of food I lose into the black hole's interstellar space.

Geo

http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product. ... id=2625033

I have a 12 cubic foot Kenmore chest freezer in my basement. Still going strong. Very little ice build-up. A gift from my parents to go with the surprise baby shower during which all the guests brought frozen meals to carry us through those first crazy weeks with a newborn. A great shower idea, by the way, for someone who is having a second or subsequent child.

I can even tell you the exact date I got it. September 12, 1981. Nine days before my second kid was born.

Geo wrote:.
I have never had the slightest success at freezerly discipline, organization nor order. Still, the benefits outweigh the odd bit of food I lose into the black hole's interstellar space.

I have a medium-size chest freezer which I love, it keeps things REALLY frozen, and I use colored milk-crate style organizers to keep it together, which work pretty well - meat in one, veggies in another, ice cream in another. I think the energy savings is significant, but you can go to the EnergyStar website and look it up.

http://www.energystar.gov/

Does anyone have success at keeping one in their unheated, unattached garage?

It's not exactly comparable, but my parents kept a 21-cu.ft. Amana upright in an unattached shed in Tempe AZ for at least 15 yrs. And the machine was already about 15 yrs old when they moved there. (Those old Amanas were simply indestructible.)

Tempe isn't as cold as Chicago, but it's a damn site hotter! 7 months+ of 100°F temps.

Geo

I have a regular refrigerator in my attached unheated garage (which can get both pretty hot and cold).

Frankly I don't worry about the freezer part. Stuff stays frozen in the summer, and if it's a little colder yet in the winter, who cares?

But the refrigerator, I do have to adjust it. What works in the summer freezes things in the winter. A few degrees makes more of a difference in a refrigerator than a freezer.

I mean, I keep adjusting the refrigerator, but NOT the freezer.

Nancy

Nancy Sexton wrote:I have a regular refrigerator in my attached unheated garage (which can get both pretty hot and cold).

[snip]

But the refrigerator, I do have to adjust it. What works in the summer freezes things in the winter. A few degrees makes more of a difference in a refrigerator than a freezer.

Yes, from what I'd read it's hard to do a refrigerator in an unheated space.

Followup report: I am the proud owner of a 5 cu. ft. Frigidaire from ABT for a total of $172! (thanks Cathy2...I'm newish to Chicago, and had never even heard of the place. We drove out there, and my S.O. about died. All those gadgets!)

Unfortunately, the cord is a bit short, so it's not sitting where I originally planned to park it. I'm having a butcher block cut for the lid (there's a great place in Pilsen on 16th St./Clinton that makes 'em), so I'll use it as an extended bit of countertop space.

RE: The Black Hole. It's probably going to be a problem, but one well worth having for the amount of cooking and bulk buying I can do now...and there will be no more avalanche of ice cubes, vodka, ice cream and the rest of my tiny refrigerator-freezer loot spilling out every time I open the door.

Last July, we bought a used 7 cu ft. chest freezer for our garage. We paid $70 and because it's small could move it in a friend's SUV. Great investment...allows me to freeze stews/soups/sauces/etc. with abandon. Check craigslist.com or chicagoreader.com.

i bought a frigidaire chest freezer from sears about 6-7 years ago for a couple hundred bucks ..been working flawlessly ..its in my detached garage so its subjected to extreme heat and cold too
only regrets ive had is not buying the larger one!

leek wrote:

Nancy Sexton wrote:I have a regular refrigerator in my attached unheated garage (which can get both pretty hot and cold).

[snip]

But the refrigerator, I do have to adjust it. What works in the summer freezes things in the winter. A few degrees makes more of a difference in a refrigerator than a freezer.

Yes, from what I'd read it's hard to do a refrigerator in an unheated space.

yes some refrigerators will shut off once temp hits below 30 some degrees..freezer should run fine though

So, I've heard two different, contradicting theories about filling a chest freezer to keep the motor from running constantly: mom says to put water-filled jugs in to fill dead space in the freezer so that it stays cool and doesn't run all of the time.

I think the directions for the freezer say the opposite: don't overfill the freezer or the motor will kill itself running all of the time.

Any thoughts?

I haven't filled the freezer to capacity with stuff, so there's a fair amount of empty space (probably 2 of the 5 cu. feet are empty). Should I put some bags of ice or water jugs in, or leave it as is?

I'm with your mom in favor of the water-filled jugs. It has the added advantage of keeping the Department of Homeland Security happy. And it will keep your food colder longer if you have a power failure.

Fuller is better: greater thermal 'inertia' makes things much easier on the machine, once its nominal temp is reached.

And water is very good, if for no other reason than that it takes a lot of energy to raise it from solid @ 32° to liquid @ 32°. My full Amana BIG chest freezer lasted from Sunday night until the power went back on Friday afternoon, during an ice-storm-caused power outage in KC a dozen or so yrs ago.

And you can always put a couple of blankets on the freezer--making sure, of course, that the fan's exhaust isn't blocked--which makes its life even easier. : )

Geo

Geo wrote:Fuller is better: greater thermal 'inertia' makes things much easier on the machine, once its nominal temp is reached.

Yup, much less cold air falls out and has to be recooled each time the fridge is opened.
I prefer to keep my freezer filled with gel packs. See here

sazerac--

Interesting. How much thermally better than water are those blue gels? ie., what's their specific latent heat of fusion? It might be easier (and cheaper!) to acquire gallons and gallons of water than comparable amounts of blue gel... but if their specific heat is really a lot better, then it would pay to use them instead of water.

Geo

Geo wrote: How much thermally better than water are those blue gels? ie., what's their specific latent heat of fusion? It might be easier (and cheaper!) to acquire gallons and gallons of water than comparable amounts of blue gel... but if their specific heat is really a lot better, then it would pay to use them instead of water.

Blue gels or equivalent - non-blue gel or foam brick - thingie packs are most certainly not easier to acquire or cheaper or for that matter more effective thermal storage agents than water.
Few substances (especially which you'd want in your freezer) have a higher specific heat capacity - the energy required to raise the temperature of a unit mass of the substance – than water. So a fair amount of energy is required (initially) to freeze all that water. However, once frozen, the ice would be better than most anything in keeping things cold as the latent heat of fusion – the energy required to change the state from solid to liquid (ice) or vice versa – of water is again almost unbeatably high. The latent heat of fusion for water is measured at 0 ºC (we'll assume for present purposes that all places on earth are at sea level and on the equator). The gel things probably have a different (higher) freezing point which may make them more suitable as packable refrigerants – as they would stay 'frozen' longer at higher (than 0 ºC) temperatures. I think the gels are better for cold shipping/packaging. There could also be thermal conductivity issues that may or may not favor the gels. I'm no physicist or heat transfer engineer and these are at best simplistic and cursory explanations – though I'm sure people have figured out what is optimal for whatever function*.

At any rate**, I use the gel packs due to simple practical considerations: a) I can scavenge them (so they're 'free') b) They are more convenient than ziplocks of water – to fill nooks and crannies in the freezer or the cooler they are ready (faster) to go into and c) I don't have to worry about dealing with flooding/leakage issues as much as I would with water.

*Water may indeed be better – but advocating tap water seems rather unpatentable and anticapitalistic. What do I know, who would buy water…

**Geo, I never imagined I'd see the question, "What's their specific latent heat of fusion?" on LTH , but I'm not surprised. Thanks for asking – it made me think.

Sazerac,

Tnx for the nice, lucid explanation. Methinks that, if I could get them at the same price you get them, I'd use some of the gel packs too, esp. since they're a much nicer size than the gallon plastic milk bottles!

But for general space-filling, probably the gallon bottles filled with water are the best. Fill in the nooks and crannies with blue-gel.

Ain't LTH grand? One just never knows what's going to come up next!

Tnx again!

Geo