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How long does a freezer stay frozen when the power goes out?
- svnpenn 6y ago> about 36 hours > while the power is out, for each time the door is opened for five seconds, subtract 7 minutes
- abiogenesis 6y ago> 27 hours in a garage and not a basement
- svnpenn 6y agothats not a quote...
- abiogenesis 6y agoWell, it's a paraphrase: > If it were in a hot garage at 30° C, the food would thaw in about 3/4 of the time.
- mauriciob 6y agoDepending on freezer contents.
- baggy_trough 6y agoIf you can restock the freezer with ice, you can keep it cold for several days easily. Spoken from experience, thanks PG&E.
- michaericalribo 6y agoYou’re not wrong, but at that point it’s basically just an ice chest—a bunch of ice will keep perishables cold, whether it’s in a fridge or a portable cooler or whatever. Not as efficient, maybe, but a modern fridge is already quite efficient at retaining coolness, so I don’t see why this isn’t a permanent solution!
- ghaff 6y agoI actually went through this last week. The problem is that, if the power goes out (presumably without advance warning), a bunch of triage to basically turn your freezer into a cooler for critical items is going to cost a bunch of the stored cold air. I'd probably go instead, if you have a cooler, with buying a few bags of ice if you can and quickly pulling out high value/especially perishable items and putting them in the cooler.
- baggy_trough 6y agoYou don't have to be so quick about it. The heat capacity from warm air coming inside is dwarfed by that of the frozen solids and especially their latent heat absorbed during the melting process.
- ghaff 6y agoYou're right. If things had gone on much longer, I'd probably at least have tossed a few bags of ice in my main freeze. (Probably better than pulling stuff out and so forth.)
- aschatten 6y agoWhere do you get ice if you are out of power?
- ghaff 6y agoYou can easily be out of power and the grocery store a couple miles down the road not be.
- gpm 6y agoYou can buy giant bags of ice really cheap at many gas stations, convenience stores, grocery stores, wallmart, etc.
- fullstop 6y agoI got mine from a gas station. They had power but we did not.
- baggy_trough 6y agoSometimes you know in advance that power will be off, so you can freeze extra. Or buy outside.
- menybuvico 6y agoThis depends entirely on one's situation. I could easily get as much ice as I wanted from a nearby river, should the need arise during winter time. During summers, it'd be pretty much impossible to get hold of sufficient quantities.
- dillonmckay 6y agoDoes it not depend on what is in the freezer? Like, if it is half-filled with icepacks versus frozen beef?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 6y agoThe article addresses thermal mass, although not into the level of detail of X% ice packs and Y% food.
- dillonmckay 6y agoI keep a certain amount of icepacks in the freezer, in case the power goes put, but also because the thermostat seems to swing a bit.
- beached_whale 6y agoIt would be interesting to see the effect of adding insulation like blankets, or foam would have.
- at_a_remove 6y agoPersonally, I throw blocks of dry ice in there as soon as the power has been out a few hours, just in case. Beats regular ice all the way.
- Someone1234 6y agoHow do you safely handle dry ice? I'm legitimately asking, I know retailers sell it with big warning labels but I wouldn't know how to transport it, move it, and similar.
- tnorthcutt 6y agoWear gloves, keep it in a paper bag or cardboard box, etc
- 082349872349872 6y agoHere the home delivery for frozen groceries is by styrofoam containers, containing dry ice in cardboard boxes along with the ordered goods.
- vraylle 6y agoTypically wherever you buy it they will have small Styrofoam coolers next to it. It typically comes sealed in thin plastic bags. Get it home, put on a glove, and throw it in your freezer. Any glove is fine as long as you're not standing there with it in your hand. There are several grocery stores that have it available here.
- EvanAnderson 6y agoWear gloves when handling it-- don't touch it with bare skin. Store it in insulated containers, but don't seal it in an airtight container. Maintain adequate ventilation. It will sink to the floor and displace oxygen.
- dfginio 6y agoOther people are giving good advice, but you should also know that it isn't that dangerous. People have died from the fumes, but only when they have a lot of dry ice in an enclosed area (e.g. a car). It can cause explosions, but that's mostly from people going out of their way to build bombs. It can cause burns, but not instantly and the pain will warn you before you get seriously injured. Don't be particularly afraid. It's not hard to handle.
- rsync 6y agoRelated ... the last time I was in the market for a chest freezer (a "deep freeze") I wanted one that showed a log of temperature over time ... This, essentially, does not exist. It appears that there are laboratory freezers that support this (very simple) feature, but they are relatively small and very expensive. A better way to go is an electricity monitor on the plug, where you track electrical power over time and assume (reasonably) that full electrical power implies full temperature control. Still ... a simple log of temperature over time (without resorting to weird solutions with raspis dangling temp wires into the freezer ...) would be a very nice feature and I'm disappointed that it doesn't exist ...
- oh_sigh 6y agoYou could just freeze a cup of water, and then stick a penny in top of it. If you ever come back to find your penny embedded or at the bottom of the cup, you know your freezer thawed out at some point
- jandrese 6y agoJust make sure to cover the cup so the ice doesn't sublimate away.
- badRNG 6y ago> without resorting to weird solutions with raspis dangling temp wires into the freezer ... Well, I had a solution up till that line. There's gotta be an elegant way to set something like that up on top of the fridge out of sight with clean cable management into the freezer.
- ghaff 6y agoIf you're going to bother--especially with a chest freezer--you probably want a number of temperature probes anyway. Just because there's been some thawing at the top/front doesn't mean that everything has thawed.
- kevindong 6y agoSuch data might be interesting to look at, but as long as the freezer does its job (aka keep everything stored within it fully frozen), what's the point in having that data?
- jacknews 6y agoYou want the contents to remain BELOW 0C, not hovering at 0C while everything melts. You can do this by adding some salt-water bottles, which have a lower melting point, and will therefore absorb a lot of heat (heat of fusion) well below 0C. Eg add 250g salt/liter gives melting point of -18C. Of course you waste some space on useless salt water vs potable - maybe there are better alternatives, eg fruit juice? Milk? Honey?
- ghaff 6y agoI'd have to do the calculations but wouldn't you be better off with a solution that just barely froze at freezer temps? Because of latent heat of melting? i.e. you want it to freeze--just at as low a temperature as possible given the freezer temperature. Your basic point makes sense to me though of course thawing isn't even. ADDED: Doing the calculation. It takes 334 joules to melt 1g of water vs. about 4 joules to raise that same gram of liquid water 1 degree. Freezer temp is supposed to be about -18 degrees Celsius. So the latent heat of melting is a bigger deal than a few degrees of raising liquid temperature. So you should have ice packs maybe somewhere in the -10 degree range which is what I assume commercial ice packs do.
- gnopgnip 6y agoCompletely saturated salty water freezes right around -6F or -21C. And most home freezers are set to right around that for energy conservation reasons, but max out even lower. So you could use any briny water and it will phase change before your food melts. I'm surprised a 12v based deep freezer that runs off a reasonably sized solar panel is not more popular/affordable. With the right amount of thermal mass, and good insulation, and a small battery you could greatly extend how long your food stays cold. There are a lot of people who live in places where snowy weather or high winds and loss of power is an eventuality. In an emergency losing your food is a bigger concern than just the cost of the food.
- Gibbon1 6y ago12V/120V freezers do exist and are marketed towards RV, camping, and off grid markets. Disadvantage is they tend to be smaller, cost more. But they are very efficient. Where a residential freezer might draw a couple of hundred watts dual voltage fridges draw 25-50 watts. And automatically switch between 12VDC and 120VAC. So they can be connected to both shore power and a battery at the same time and it 'just works'
- pengaru 6y agoA test with the freezer as full as possible with just water would be interesting as a best-case set of data points to compare against. I always keep containers full of water in the bowels of my refrigerators/freezers only removing them when the space is required for food. There's not much sense in keeping empty volumes of air in a refrigerated space.
- Mathnerd314 6y agoWhen there's no airflow in the refrigerator, then it takes a long time to chill food, the reverse of how a blast chiller can chill food really quickly by moving lots of air. But maybe the water chills the air to make up for this, IDK. It would be interesting to experiment.
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoChilling food super swiftly / immediately is rarely a concern for regular home residents. It is a public health concern at scale. Two overlapping but divergent scenarios.
- OJFord 6y agoChilling drinks quickly is though. (Or gazpacho, thought that might be shot down as a bit niche though. But it is lovely this time of year (in the Northern hemisphere)!)
- TheSpiceIsLife 6y agoWhy?
- OJFord 6y agoWhy might I want to chill drinks quickly? Because I (or someone) want(s) a chilled drink, and forgot to put it in earlier, or it was only just bought/arrived. I've known people keep celebratory champagne permanently chilled in case of an unexpected call for it; I semi-frequently put beer or white wine in the freezer for 15-30mins ish because I didn't think to put it in the fridge earlier (or had to take them out to make room something more critically needing to be kept cool).
- 8bitsrule 6y agoAll else being the same, the more mass in in the freezer, the less that a given inflow of heat will warm it. If 10 heat units enter, they will warm 10 kg of uniform contents much less than 100kg. If you have extra space, using it to store something dense that has a high specific heat and is inexpensive is easy: use ice. (Glaciers take a -long- time to melt!)
- sushshshsh 6y agoWe bought dry ice blocks and put them in the freezer which lasted nearly 2 days-- just in time for the power of course.
- pcurve 6y agoSo much electricity does it use every time you open the door?
- Merrill 6y agoLast week the power was out Tuesday 2 pm until Friday 8 pm, 78 hours. I left the lid shut on a 7 cubic foot chest freezer in the garage, where the ambient was in the 70s F most of the time due to the cool weather. When the power came back on, the temperature was about 37 degrees at the top of the freezer. Ice cream in the second layer down had a light bit of crystallization, but no other obvious defects. Other food will be evaluated before being eaten, but it should be safe since it was below or at normal refrigerator temperature, although texture may suffer due to being refrozen.
- sandworm101 6y agoSmall things. If the power goes out, throw a blanket or two over the freezer asap. It makes a big difference.
- mellosouls 6y agoNote, it doesn't just require an outage to stop the freezer working. Many modern freezers ironically stop working properly under low (but above freezing) room temperatures encountered in unheated rooms (eg outbuildings, garages, etc) in colder climates.
- contingencies 6y agoIt depends on the thermal mass of the contents, the effectiveness of the insulation, and the external ambient environmental temperature. In real world use, it also generally depends on (1) how frequently and for how long you open it, and (2) whether it's top-loading (efficient) versus front-loading (inefficient). Source: My venture custom designed and built a refrigeration circuit with autonomous electronic management from scratch over the last year or so, so have done numerous recent tests in this space. I also visited about 4 different fridge factories in Guangdong and spoke to their engineers, investigated the different available chemical coolants, relevant sensors, etc.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- wutwutwutwut 6y agoHm did you read the article? I ask because you're just repeating things brought up in it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- shortandsweet 6y agoI keep a coffee mug filled with water in the freezer with a penny on top.
- ulucs 6y agoWouldn't the pressure from the penny bias your observatios from the mug?
- ramraj07 6y agoHave you seen how long this setup takes before it'll trigger a change? Ive left glasses of frozen water to thaw and they most definitely don't thaw evenly. They also take way more time to thaw than any regular food product due to the significant heat/surface area ratio difference.
- stblack 6y agoI bought and filled a chest freezer in pandemic preparations. Cost of the chest freezer: CAD 1,000 Cost to completely fill the freezer with good food: CAD 2,700 Given that, during a pandemic or a winter storm in Canada, a power failure can be a prolonged event... Cost of a good gas powered generator to keep the freezer viable beyond a day: CAD 1,000. This article seems to validate the generator purchase.
- walrus01 6y agoIf society and food supply chains had actually broken down due to a massive pandemic (imagine ebola with a 30% fatality rate tearing through a population of 350+ million in the USA and Canada) you would have been much better served by a stockpile of rice, beans, canned food, multivitamins and other true disaster supplies.
- stblack 6y agoThe scenario we are planning is power down for several days. Not the collapse of civilization.
- ghaff 6y ago>other true disaster supplies. A lot of people panic buying early on weren't really thinking things through. They were stocking up months of canned food and rice but many weren't stocking up on fuel, they were buying a few gallons of bottle water rather than big containers to fill with water, and I assume many weren't stocking up on ammo--which may be controversial but if we're positing societal collapse...
- tzs 6y agoI'm a little unclear on how one efficiently uses a generator to power highly intermittent loads like fridge/freezer. Does one monitor the freezer temperature, and when it starts warming start the generator, then wait for the freeze compressor stops, and then turn off the generator? Or does one keep the generator running all the time, so between times of the freezer running the generator is idling? The second option is certainly more convenient, but seems like it would waste fuel while idling. The first option would last longer--but the generator is supposed to be kept away from the house and it could get annoying to have to keep going out to start and stop it.
- morninglight 6y agoThe location of the freezer or refrigerator is critical. If you live in a house that has a typical unfinished basement, don't overlook the advantage it offers. With one simple change, you can noticeably lower your electric bill, reduce your carbon footprint, gain extra kitchen space and improve your health. Just move your refrigerator to the basement. Since the basement is normally cooler than the upstairs, the refrigerator will run less often. This will not only extend its lifetime, but also lower the electricity it consumes, thus also reducing your carbon footprint. The kitchen space previously wasted by the refrigerator has uses that are only limited by your imagination. Finally, you and your family will directly benefit from the exercise you get with trips to the fridge. Of course it is not convenient - that is the point. Sometimes you might even pass up that extra dish of ice cream, because it's a pain in the butt. However, the size of your butt may be improved. It's a simple step that can be done in a couple of hours. And the recurring benefits are automatic and last a lifetime. Method #1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J8ul-CcrzY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J8ul-CcrzY Method #2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXCiWk-aIyc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXCiWk-aIyc
- cbsks 6y agoThat’s a clever idea! I’m not sure how practical it is, however. The first problem that popped into my mind was that the stove would often be unattended while I ran downstairs to grab something I forgot from the fridge.
- vageli 6y ago> That’s a clever idea! > I’m not sure how practical it is, however. The first problem that popped into my mind was that the stove would often be unattended while I ran downstairs to grab something I forgot from the fridge. I often leave the stove unattended whilst I check the grill outside. So long as it's less than a few minutes (and you have a fire extinguisher on hand in the kitchen—as one always should), there shouldn't be a problem in most circumstances.
- wutwutwutwut 6y ago
- gruez 6y agois he using... excel 2003? I hope he doesn't open any untrusted documents, because he's probably a sitting duck in terms of exploits.
- netsharc 6y agoIn the YouTube video comments he says it's 21 years old. So Office 2000 (released to retail in June 1999). He added: "Super snappy on a modern computer!"
- jhallenworld 6y agoHere's what I've learned about refrigerators recently. My fridge is failing in a revealing way. It has an automatic defrost unit- this means that it heats the evaporator coils in the freezer every so often (I think it's once every 36 hours) to melt the frost off of them, producing the same condensation you normally get from an A/C. So where does this water go? Well there is a hose from the freezer to a pan underneath the fridge. There is a cooling fan for the condenser coils there which can dip into this pan. The idea is to use this water to help cool the condenser coils, making the fridge a little more efficient. Anyway, so the failure has to do with the management of this condensation water. When it's not working, you get a puddle of water in the bottom of the fridge compartment which eventually leaks out to the floor. First thing to check- is the hose clogged? Yes it is, washed it out, but problem still happens. Next thing to check- behind the back wall of the freezer you find the evaporator coils. At the bottom is some cheap metal called the "drain trough". It is a funnel that leads the condensation into the hose. This is where the planned obsolescence comes into play. I'm convinced that the manufactures make this metal out of steal with just the tiniest amount of galvanization so that it will eventually rot out. I think even plastic would have been a better material. It's theoretically possible to replace this metal, but consider the work involved: you need to empty the freezer, dry it out, remove the back of it, figure out how to move the evaporator coils out of the way without damaging them, unscrew the trough, and figure out how to wiggle it out. You need to do this at least twice (once to debug the issue in the first place, next to actually replace it). Finally good luck finding the replacement in stock (also add the time needed for this search). The fridge is maybe good for 12 years, but little chance of replacement parts stocked for that long. Certainly this is the case for my fridge, and I fabricated a temporary patch out of rubber. Also, of course, there is absolutely no way for you to inspect this part before you buy a new fridge. Maybe it's even worse on new fridges, who knows? Edit: check it out, someone else noticed this: https://medium.com/@michael.grimshaw1/rusted-through-in-four-years-c897fd7ce08f https://medium.com/@michael.grimshaw1/rusted-through-in-four...
- gruez 6y ago> This is where the planned obsolescence comes into play. I'm convinced that the manufactures make this metal out of steal with just the tiniest amount of galvanization so that it will eventually rot out. One thing I never got about "planned obsolescence" as some sort of way to get more recurring revenue is how it works with competitors. If you're the only game in town then it makes perfect sense, but if your appliance died an early death, are you really going to buy from the same manufacturer? What if another manufacturer doesn't do the same thing and their appliance lasts longer? Wouldn't you lose market share? For it to work you'd need some sort of conspiracy with all the other competitors so everyone cuts quality in unison, which we haven't seen a lot of evidence of. The only one that comes to mind is the lightbulb one.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- galkk 6y ago> When opening an empty upright freezer, all the cold air can just "fall out" I recently found that the ice-cream refrigerators of street vendors (and everything else that is being sold when the doors are frequently opened) are opening on the top for that exact reason - to not let cold air "fall out" (because cold air is on the bottom)
- celloductor 6y agoalso why when i buy ice cream i go for the one on the bottom of the shelf. it's the place with the most stable temperature- as the top area can fluctuate in temperature with people opening and closing the door. was told that by an ice cream seller.
- rollulus 6y agoI find it weird that his new freezer has open compartments. Mine, and the majority a quick google search showed, have boxes with the opening on top in each compartment, you can slide out. I don't have the numbers but my intuition says that it's more energy efficient.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- philwelch 6y agoThis is also why the Trader Joe’s freezer/refrigerator section is designed the way it is. Turns out that a chest freezer/refrigerator with no top on it at all isn’t that much worse than a standing freezer/refrigerator with a door that gets opened and closed over and over again.
- Symbiote 6y agoMost normal supermarkets in Europe either have upright doors (more common if space is limited) or open chests. The open chests are covered when the shop is closed. The budget supermarkets tend to have chests with a transparent sliding door on top.
- supernova87a 6y agoI was just looking at getting a NG generator installed for my parents on the east coast, after watching these recent storms come through. I'd dawdled on this for years, because it was just infrequent enough. Anyway, I also looked at battery backup systems (Tesla, Enphase, etc). Unfortunately, it seems they haven't reached cost competitiveness with the plain old gas generator yet. Not a lot of power density (time), and too expensive for the benefit in noise/fumes/etc. $15000 for 2-3 days worth of backup, compared to $5000 for installing a Kohler run of the mill NG unit, etc. I was disappointed -- was hoping that batteries were further along than they are. Anyway, I'm sure there's going to be a run on getting these installed for the next few months, so clearly there's plenty of time to think it over.
- pfdietz 6y agoAn inverter that runs off the 12V battery in your car is very cheap. Get one, and an extension cord, and you have an emergency power source to cool down your freezer every few days.
- gregwebs 6y agoThis is the approach I am taking (bought inverter, will test it out next weekend). I don't think you can really run this off the battery (it will be on the order of 1000 watts): instead you need to have the car turned on and will be essentially running it off the inverter. So it's essentially an inefficient gas-powered generator that you already have on-hand and you need to make sure you have some gas in the tank.
- pfdietz 6y agoI don't think a freezer draws anywhere close to 1000W when running. Perhaps you are talking about a startup transient?
- pedrocr 6y agoThat's one thing that's annoying in the current crop of EVs. Almost none of them support drawing power from the cars even though they have those huge batteries just standing there. I understand not wanting to add the cost of the inverter to every car but it seems it should be relatively straightforward to support external inverters that plug into the DC part of the CCS connector.
- 7373737373 6y agoI'd like to see a similar experiment that analyzes the effect of opening a window on the oxygen (and perhaps other gases) content of living spaces
- SCAQTony 6y agoFreezer: 8-cubit feet of space totally full! If you keep the door shut and don't open it the food will last about 12-hours. This happened to me this week. Use dry ice to keep the food fresh. Dry ice costs $1.00 a pound, you need 25 pounds total, five for the freezer. This solution will work for about 12-hours.
- an-allen 6y agoHi. Actualexperience here... it depends on the ambient temperature and how much stuff is in said freezer. So heres a data point: Freezer: normal upper level refrigerator freezer chock full of frozen fish caught on holiday in Alaska. Place, Time: Houston, TX, Late Summer, Hurricane Igor just hit and knocked our power out for 14 days. Findings: We kept the freezer shut and at about 4-5 days the fish was noticeably thawing and getting flexible. Still cold, but not frozen. I think we might have made an attempt at dry ice but it was too late in the process to matter. At day 8 or so it had completely defrosted. At day 10 the smell was so horrendous that if we opened the freezer door we would gag. At day 14 the power returned. On day 15 or 16 we opened the now cold rotted fish in the freezer and cleaned it out. We vomited multiple times. The smell, despite multiple rounds of bleach, never really went away. The stench permanently inextricable from the lining of the freezer, and the flavor of every ice cube ever made in it from then on.
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoNot to argue with science but why didn't you clean the fish out about day 7? Was it hurricane made getting rid of fish problematic?
- an-allen 6y agoI think shock, depression, anger, disbelief, the mechanics of where to put the rotting fish... like there was a tree down in our front yard, every store was closed in a 40 mile radius, power was out to most of Houston... but yea hindsight being 20/20 i would have relocated the fish to a house with a generator. it was a really dark time man.
- walrus01 6y agoIf you had a shovel would it not have been the more hygienic disposal option, at about day 7/8 once you were sure the power was not coming back soon, to dig a 3.5 foot deep hole, put the fish in it and cover it over?
- 6y ago
- todd8 6y agoA simple way to detect power failure induced thawing in a freezer is to store a paper cup about half full of frozen water in the freezer. By keeping a coin on top of the ice it’s easy to see with a quick glance if the temperature has risen for an extended period of time (possibly due to a temporary power failure or the door not being fully closed).
- jsilence 6y agoExcellent trick! Thanks!
- ryanianian 6y agoI keep a bag of ice cubes in the freezer for this purpose. If it’s a single cube the freezer went out.
- mumblemumble 6y agoIt's a good trick, although there's a caveat: it only works with freezers that aren't self-defrosting.
- rambojazz 6y agoIf freezers self-defrost by lowering the internal temperature, won't that spoil the food inside by lowering and raising the temp multiple times?
- mumblemumble 6y agoIn my experience, food in self-defrosting freezers doesn't outright spoil quickly enough to be a practical concern, though I'm sure it does technically allow for stuff to grow faster. What it does do, though, is get freezer burned very quickly.
- kyteland 6y agoThey don't lower the internal temperature of the freezer. The frost generally forms first on the evaporator unit and that is the part that is heated periodically to remove the ice buildup. It's possible for ice to build up elsewhere in the freezer but the air is circulated and the remaining ice generally sublimates away. This wouldn't cause your food or a bag of ice to melt, but it will cause your ice cubes to shrink over time and will freezer burn your frozen food.
- Markoff 6y ago36 hours in 19C room or 3/4 (27hrs) in 30C seem about right worked in insurance company with people claiming broken freezers among other things and you can for sure get through day even in hot weather of course this won't fly in shops where they have to legally store the products frozen during whole distribution chain
- mxfh 6y agoat least half a day is usually safe. All Appliances sold in EU have this in their data sheet: ‘power cut safe “X” h’ defined as ‘temperature rise time’ Me example from last year: 4h at about 20C Ambient temperture: 4 degree Celsius loss from -20C Too bad smart home temperature logging is failing too while power is off: https://twitter.com/mxfh/status/1194646175644897281/ https://twitter.com/mxfh/status/1194646175644897281/
- banach_d 6y agoThis is an extremely interesting question, both from a scientific and a practical point of view, but the article doesn't really answer it at all. He starts by measuring the temperature in the freezer, but then puts a realistic amount of food in it and doesn't want to let the food go bad. So he makes an extrapolation from the warming between -18 and -11, but immediately points out (fairly) that the extrapolation is not really valid. Then he answers a completely different question - how much cold is lost when you open the door. The answer to that is also quite dubious and of limited applicability. The experiment I would like to see is this: fill a freezer (or a couple of different types of freezer) X% (where X could be 50, 80, 100) with a mix of different frozen foods, including ice cream, meat, vegetables, cooked meals, bread. Turn the power off. Every day, open the freezer briefly, long enough to retrieve some of your samples, maybe some from the top/front and some from the bottom/back. Then tell us, for a few types of food and location in the freezer, what day did the food thaw enough that you wouldn't want to refreeze it? What day did the food become less than perfect if consumed immediately? What day did the food become inedible? People can put up with different levels of yickiness so you'd want descriptions more than numbers here.
- jonplackett 6y agoRelated but tangential anecdote: When we went on our honeymoon my mother in law came around and left our freezer full of delicious meat, fish all sorts. But then inexplicably turned off the freezer electricity switch on her way out. 2 weeks later my little sister cane around to leave us some milk in the fridge for our return. Only to find the entire kitchen wreaking of rotting meat and water and other crap all over the floor. She cleaned it up without even telling us - plus did I mention she’s a vegetarian and hates the smell of meat. Top marks for my family that day.
- ethagknight 6y agoYou had your freezer on a switched outlet?
- jonplackett 6y agoNot even - it was inside a little electrics box with switches for the cooker, dishwasher, washing machine and things like that which you don’t ever really turn off unless you’re replacing them. The one outlier is that the extractor fan is also in there and maybe that’s why she thought she needed to turn those things off.
- MatthiasWandel 6y agoMaker of the video here. For a moment, I though this was about my video and article, but reading the comments, it's more about everyone sharing their stories. Few of the comments reflect having read the article. Fair enough, sometimes it just takes a link to give theme for a discussion.
- spuz 6y agoIf I've learnt anything from reading Hacker News for a few years it's that I would take this as a compliment that the article did a good in covering any aspect we might be curious about and answer any questions we might have had. For example the fact that you did the experiment with an empty and full freezer and with empty boxes vs food pretty much preempts any nit-picks you might get from people in this this thread.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- m0nty 6y agoI read the article with interest. Thanks for taking the time. My father-in-law forever refused to buy an upright freezer because "as soon as you open the door, all the cold air falls out." Which I now know to be only partially correct.
- uglycoyote 6y agoI am a fan of your site and appreciate your thoughtful writing, but I found that I could not get very far through this article on mobile (and I usually read HN on mobile, not desktop). The problem is the layout. The font is small, and if you zoom in, it does not wrap. I have noticed this is the past, it's not the first time that one of your articles has been linked on Hacker News. And I always thought it was strange, because you appear to use very minimal CSS styling, that word-wrapping would not work properly "out of the box". Looking at this page now (on my laptop) I see that everything is inside of a fixed width (1150px) table, so that explains it. Have you thought about changing your pages to use a more mobile-friendly setup, like a flexbox layout? I imagine now that you have hundreds of pages and years of content under your belt (quite an impressive site!) it might be difficult to make such a change on all of your content!
- dmichulke 6y agoNitpick and fun fact: "we avoid opening the fridge and freezer to keep the cold inside." Technically, you cannot keep the cold inside because cold is a word for the absence of warmth (energy), so you're actually trying to keep the warmth outside. Words indicating the absence of something (cold, darkness, ...) are called privatives. h/t Terry Pratchett
- xavieralexandre 6y agoTechnically there is a mass of cold air that comes out of the fridge when you open the door. Keeping the door shot keeps this mass of air inside.
- Wolfenstein98k 6y agoAll this is missing is an executive summary!
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoThawed vs unthawed isn't a bool. You're really interested in the long-term safety of the food, and that starts to decrease as temperatures start to increase. -18C/0F is the point at which most pathogens are forced to hibernate and bacterial cultures stop growing. But they don't die, and they'll start to revive at higher temperatures - which means they'll begin to spread if there's a regular thaw/freeze cycle, even in a freezer that spends some of its time at -18C/0F.
- btbuildem 6y agoThe temp curves may be non-linear, so I'm not convinced about the extrapolation from just a few hours. I get not wanting to spoil food -- but why didn't he try with, say, jugs of water? Easy way to fill the freezer, great thermal mass, and probably a decent approximation of freezable goods.
- seanc 6y agoDuring an extended power outage you can add quite a bit of time by wrapping the freezer in more insulation. Anything will do; fibreglass insulation, quilts, blankets. You'll be shocked at how cold the inside of the blanket gets.
- mschuster91 6y agoThe solution for this is to buy a generator. Hand started 1 kW ones go for ~130€ these days (https://toom.de/p/inverter-strom-generator-sg-1200/1501059 https://toom.de/p/inverter-strom-generator-sg-1200/1501059), plus enough cable from <somewhere outdoor> to <location of fridge>. That's enough for 24/7 running the fridge and any other important appliances (think a TV/radio and a cellphone charger to have access to some form of information/communication). Don't even need to keep a jerrycan around and risk the fuel go stale if you know how to siphon fuel from your car in an emergency (for a widespread outage, it is not guaranteed that gas stations are operational). Only requirement is to check oil level and start them up and run for at least half an hour once a quarter (you might get away with half a year). PSA: Do not, never ever, even dream about putting that generator indoors unless you have a certified chimney sweep (or whatever your regional equivalent is) certify the safety of the exhaust system. And even if you do (or have any other sort of fuel furnace in the house), get at least a CO warner at the most bottom place of your house!
- devy 6y agoTropical Storm Isaias hit my area last week with tornados (which has been really rare.) and power went out for a few days. Our local utility company actually has a FAQ / Tips page[1] to answer this question. It appears that the information was sourced from CDC[2] and American Red Cross[3]. [1]: https://nj.pseg.com/outageandgasleaks/duringanoutage/outageresources https://nj.pseg.com/outageandgasleaks/duringanoutage/outager... [2]: https://emergency.cdc.gov/poweroutage/pdf/poweroutage.pdf https://emergency.cdc.gov/poweroutage/pdf/poweroutage.pdf [3]: https://www.redcross.org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergencies/types-of-emergencies/power-outage.html#During https://www.redcross.org/get-help/how-to-prepare-for-emergen...
- 8note 6y agoIt would be nice to see the rest of the thermal analysis, and see if it matches the provided specs
- K0balt 6y agoI operate 5 inexpensive chest freezers 4 hours a day on a solar microgrid system. 4 hours is enough to keep them frozen hard, as long as they are full. I use water bottles to fill any extra space. If you put a lot of stuff in them at a time, they will need to be run overnight (>12hrs) to freeze them down hard. If you do not freeze the contents completely at first, it may not ever freeze, because if it doesn't store the latent energy of freezing the freezer won't have enough thermal inertia to remain below freezing during the 20 hours of rest. On very rainy periods, we can go about 48 hours from the end of the last freeze cycle before any significant melting occurs.