Followers

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Did ignorance kill our freezer?

   Spent instead of saved yesterday & for one of my least favorite reasons: replacing something that broke. While Hubby had been jonesing for an upright freezer for awhile, I was hoping our little chest-type freezer had a few more years on it.
   Anyway, we phoned a couple of stores for prices, then hit three stores within close range of one another to come up with the best deal we could find. This upright style should make it easier to find things at a glance, so hopefully less foods will be lost to freezer burn. And I vow to open it and take a picture periodically, so I can see at a glance (in the picture) all that lies within...without standing with the door open, wasting energy.
   We went with a non-defrosting type, 'cause it costs $20 bucks less to operate per year. We'll have to be extra vigilant to defrost it, since I've recently learned that frost makes a freezer work harder, wasting energy.
   Always looking for ways to save money, go greener, I've always got some book cracked open. Currently reading the book "Tight Living for Tough Times" by Frank Nellis and ironically came across a section this morn about the importance of cleaning air filters and condensers. In his experience with outdoor freezer chests, "half the time a unit went down it was due to a dirty condenser." (Click for Frank's website) As we keep our freezer in an attached garage that also houses my car, I'd for some reason never even considered pulling the thing out to vacuum the back of it, like we do with the coils on our inside refrigerator/freezer. I'll know better next time!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I can't wait until I can finally put my chest freezer to good use. It's living in my in-laws basement until we buy a house.

Jessica

Practical Parsimony said...

The non-defrost type freezer also keeps the food consistently frozen. The frost-free freezers actually warm the food as they remove moisture and frost from the freezer. Did you ever notice that sometimes ice cream is soft in the store freezers and that at other times the ice cream is rock hard? Store freezers are frost free. Even for $20/year savings and consistently frozen food, I would still go for the frost-free freezer, but that is just me. I am not lazy but doubt I could defrost one without dropping from the chore. Congratulations!

Pure Ella said...

Interesting - you should clean that thing?
Congrats on the new freezer ;)
What is it that you stock up so much of? It looks good ;)

Dmarie said...

Practical, unlike you, I AM lazy, but a freezer that uses less watts fits in with my dream of one day having solar power. Far, far away maybe, but a girl can dream, can't she? Thx for the comments; look forward to visiting your sites!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...