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I've lost 2 freezers worth of food in the last 25 years due to power outages. I have since purchased a battery that can run a freezer in summer for a few hour
by bryanlarsen 3y ago
I've lost 2 freezers worth of food in the last 25 years due to power outages. I have since purchased a battery that can run a freezer in summer for a few hours or a furnace fan in winter for several days for the next outage. Adding a solar panel so I can use that battery continuously wouldn't pay for the battery, but it'd sure offset it considerably.
- neilv 3y agoWere they the lid on top freestanding freezers? How long were the outages, and what was the environment?
- bryanlarsen 3y agoYes, lid on top. 4 day outages in both cases.
- lolinder 3y agoWould a few hours of runtime actually save your freezer food in the event of another 4 day outage?
- Retric 3y agoIt’s likely, freezers don’t operate continuously.
- coffeebeqn 3y agoIt’s not a few hours. It’s all sunlight hours plus a few hours from the battery per day
- lolinder 3y agoTFA's system, yes, but OP just bought a battery and is now considering adding a solar system.
- briffle 3y agoWhen I last had a multi-day outage, we hooked our generator up to our freezer. We would run for one hour, then off for 3-4 hours. Also good schedule for making more coffee, charging phones, etc.
- fooker 3y ago>run a freezer in summer for a few hours. You can 'run' a freezer for about 10-12 hours by purchasing 5-10$ worth of ice from a grocery store. For something that happens twice in 25 years, that seems like the more pragmatic way to go?
- thaumaturgy 3y agoYou can do that so long as nobody else in the area affected by the outage had the same idea and got there before you. The last major outage (due to an ice event), I hit the stores within the first hour of the outage and they were already cleaned out of water, propane, ice, and getting rapidly cleaned out of other supplies.
- smeej 3y agoI really don't want to be rude here, but I live in a place where we constantly throw the frozen stuff outside into the snow when the power goes out, so I'm genuinely confused. If it was an ice event, why would you have to travel to get ice?
- bryanlarsen 3y agoBattery is for freezer in summer and for furnace fan in winter.
- BenjiWiebe 3y agoAnd the comment above mentions that the power outage was due to ice, so highly unlikely to be in the summer.
- Retric 3y agoSure but the poster was worried about multi day power outages in the summer. Local issues don’t cause 4 day outages it’s stuff like hurricanes or major grid infrastructure issues from construction mishaps. Ex: https://islandfreepress.org/outer-banks-news/07272018-ayearafterthecableswerecutlookingbackatthe2017poweroutage/#:~:text=At%204%3A30%20a.m.%20on,all%20of%20Hatteras%20and%20Ocracoke https://islandfreepress.org/outer-banks-news/07272018-ayeara...
- avar 3y agoDid you consider buying a larger freezer (or sacrificing space), and just filling part of it with freezer gel packs? I wonder what the cost/benefit calculation is for that v.s. an entire solar backup system.
- Scoundreller 3y agoNaw, fill it up with salty water bottles. Drive the phase change to happen well below 0 centigrade. 23% saltwater will help hold your freezer at -21C (which is probably too salty to freeze in most freezers, but you get the point).
- avar 3y agoYes, you can DIY-it, although I'm a bigger fan of using box-shaped freezer-certified tupperware, it's more space-efficient. But the commercial product is cheap enough to buy if it's going to be your backup plan.