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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?
Related ... 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 an…
If you can restock the freezer with ice, you can keep it cold for several days easily. Spoken from experience, thanks PG&E.
You’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!
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.
> about 36 hours > while the power is out, for each time the door is opened for five seconds, subtract 7 minutes
If you can restock the freezer with ice, you can keep it cold for several days easily. Spoken from experience, thanks PG&E.
Related ... 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 an…
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.
> about 36 hours > while the power is out, for each time the door is opened for five seconds, subtract 7 minutes
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.
Related ... 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 an…