151–160 of 384 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't understand why that doesn't make sense. What you do with containers of water is what doesn't make sense to me.
Water has a much higher heat capacity than water, and obviously much higher density too. By filling freezer space with water, the thermal mass of the freezer goes up, and it will stay cold for longer in a power outage.
It 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 managemen…
Is that a web 2.0 way of saying a thermostat?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends what you're optimizing for. If you're primarily interested in resilience to power outages, then maybe you are OK with the wasted energy used to freeze/re-freeze the extra water.
Water is not a good choice to optimize for this. Most energy from the ambient air gets consumed at the thawing point of the medium - 0 degrees for water. So water/ice will keep freezer at 0 degrees for longer, but that’s not an attractive goal for a freezer - you want some cooling medium that does the phase change at a colder temperature (adding copious amounts of salt to the water would go a long way) Professional c…
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.
Hi. 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 thaw…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There have already been two replies pointing out why this is a bad idea, but, why is this a good idea? Why is learning to plan your meals better (for... some definition of that term, which doesn't appear to be the usual one) worthwhile?
I cook often and, to OP's point, cooking can go a lot smoother if I spend a few extra minutes up front gathering all of my ingredients and prepping my workstation/workflow. That said, I also recognize that there are practical reasons for not always including every single item during said prep and making a few trips to the fridge during the cook.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chilling 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.
Chilling 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)!)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How 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.
I've handled it for decades. First thing you do when you get your slab is that you wrap it in two towels, then you fold down the loose edges and pop that in a cooler. Towels towels towels, that's my go-to. You can handle dry ice with your bare hands -- I have scores of times -- the trick is that contact with pressure (squeezing or weight) is what is going to give you frostbite. Otherwise, I have swiftly moved two pou…
Yes, really. Indoors we can easily get as high co2 levels as 1000ppm (starting from 400 something which we have outside now). That has in various studies been connected to upwards of 30% in cognitive decline in some tests like decision making. Simpler tests are also affected, but not as much. Here's an article about a Harvard study: https://archive.thinkprogress.org/exclusive-elevated-co2-lev...
Dry ice in the car without the windows down seems like a bad idea.
Hi. 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 thaw…
Not 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?
Hi. 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 thaw…
Not 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?
The freezer at least contains the smell a bit. That fish outdoors in the heat could start smelling even worse.