Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How long does a freezer stay frozen when the power goes out?

woodgears.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 384 posts

Re: How long does a freezer stay frozen when the power goes out?

#231

Post by Slartie »

at_a_remove wrote: post #8

Personally, 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.

Also works great when going to multi-day music festivals with no power on the campground. We always buy some 20kg or so of dry ice blocks, a big styrofoam box full of it, and move a block over to the cooler containing the beer every few hours. Works great for up to 5 or 6 days.

Also, putting little bits of the ice blocks directly into drinks makes for a cool fog effect in addition to keeping your gin tonic at refreshing temperature.

Re: How long does a freezer stay frozen when the power goes out?

#232

Post by darkerside »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #134
efficax wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in the US natural gas stoves are very common. There is some risk when frying on high heat that you could start an oil fire... Never used induction but gas offers very fine control of heat with a nice stove, especially compared to electric which relies on radiant heat from a coil and cannot change temperatures rapidly

I used gas for 20 years, then induction for 10. Induction wins everywhere (reproducibility of heat, speed to heat, ease of cleaning...) The only thing I miss a tiny bit from gas is the ability to tilt a pan to have oil gather in a puddle to deep fry something small. Other than that everytime I use gas I long for induction.

I have had the opposite experience with speed to heat.

I also like the ability to modulate heat very quickly by raising, lowering, or tilting the pan.

Re: How long does a freezer stay frozen when the power goes out?

#233

Post by MatthiasWandel »

Maker 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.

Re: How long does a freezer stay frozen when the power goes out?

#234

Post by banach_d »

wccrawford wrote: post #224
banach_d wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The actual article doesn't answer the question and this is actually a much more helpful answer.

It actually does, but not as clearly as I'd hoped. "for a freezer of this size, completely packed, you would probably have twice as long before running into problems with melting when the power goes out, so about 36 hours. This assuming it's in a room at 19° C (a cool basement). If it were in a hot garage at 30° C, the food would thaw in about 3/4 of the time. And while the power is out, for each time the door is ope…

He walks back the 36 hours claim which he recognizes is a completely unjustified extrapolation. And the 'subtract 7 minutes' is a very dubious answer to a completely different question.

Re: How long does a freezer stay frozen when the power goes out?

#235

Post by banach_d »

msandford wrote: post #97
refurb wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because OP mentioned saturated brine and a freezing point of -18C.

That's the point! The brine is frozen at -19c and liquid at - 17c which is well below the freezing point of everything else in the freezer. Or you can have normal water which is frozen at -1c and liquid at 1c. Your pick. The handy thing about the brine is that its absorbs heat at a temperature below that which everything else thaws. So as the brine thaws it keeps your freezer at -18c which means everything in it is s…

But if the brine is not frozen at the working temperature of your freezer, it's completely ineffective compared to water.

Re: How long does a freezer stay frozen when the power goes out?

#236

Post by zaarn »

Symbiote wrote: post #184
philwelch wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This 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.

Most 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.

In germany the sliding top door is standard in almost all supermarkets, ranging from ALDI to Edeka, it covers "normal" and "budget" supermarkets. The only places I see non-transparent doors is bulk supermarkets.

Re: How long does a freezer stay frozen when the power goes out?

#237

Post by MatthiasWandel »

stblack wrote: post #61

I 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.

Problem is, freezers typically run 40% of the time. If you let it get up to -10C, the duty cycle will be a fair bit lower, but still quite high, while only drawing about 100 watts. But that's a lot of money to spend protecting food hoarding. Dry goods would be better for emergency cases.

Re: How long does a freezer stay frozen when the power goes out?

#238

Post by spuz »

MatthiasWandel wrote: post #233

Maker 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.

If 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.

Re: How long does a freezer stay frozen when the power goes out?

#239

Post by pfdietz »

supernova87a wrote: post #132

I 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), an…

An 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.

Re: How long does a freezer stay frozen when the power goes out?

#240

Post by mnw21cam »

axaxs wrote: post #67
oehtXRwMkIs wrote: post #37

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.

Google 'icebox', which is coincidentally what my Dad still calls refrigerators. Different times.

Small fridges sometimes have an icebox inside them, which is a different thing to a fridge/freezer which actually has a separate door, or a dedicated freezer. The icebox is just a part of the fridge compartment, weakly insulated from the rest of the compartment, and the cooling plate is located inside the icebox. The rest of the fridge is kept cool mainly from cold leaking out the icebox.
Post reply on HN