OT: 'Self defrosting' freezers?

[T i m]

The very old non-condensing tumble dryer that I haven't got-round (bothered) fixing this time round is currently taking up space that could contain a desktop or under counter freezer (it's on a shelf over the WM) and I'm both torn to go 'under counter size over 'counter top' for better VFM (capacity and energy consumption for capacity) and as long as the top section is just a flap rather than a draw, the height shouldn't be an issue (especially for me as I'm both 6'2" tall and do all the cooking ...). ;-)

The big question if I go under counter size is is the 'Frost free' or 'Self defrosting' (assuming they are the same?) ... worth having?

I can't say manually defrosting the very old Zanussi under-counter freezer has ever really been a big issue and it doesn't even get done very often (but probably less frequently than it really should for good efficiency).

So is self defrosting one of those 'must have' features or just 'ok when it works'?

The additional question of spending more on something that has a better energy rating takes us into the unknown ... how long it might last over the extra cost and any potential savings on running costs and could be impacted by the whole 'self defrosting' thing. What happens when that stops working ... is it then worse than a non self-defrosting model?

Cold temperature working could be relevant, as could the fast freeze feature (when doing a big frozen shop).

So, what experiences of any of the above do the panel have please?

Cheers, T i m

[Scribbles]

Self-defrosting is a Must Have as far as I am concerned. Most people have a particular domestic task they absolutely loathe and detest; for me, that task is defrosting fridges and freezers. Put simply, life's too short for all that faff and puddles of water.

My current freezer is an under the counter AEC model, about 8 years old and A-rated. Apart from the time I stupidly left the door open overnight, it's never given me a moment's bother. Then, I was obliged to empty and unplug it while it completely defrosted and the temperature control mechanism reset itself. (It's one way to get to know the neighbours. "Er, hello. I live at number 94. I don't suppose you have room in your freezer for 5 litres of tomato soup and a couple of steak pies overnight, by any chance?")

If I use the fast-freeze button, I set an alarm on my phone to remind me to turn it off at the appropriate time because the green light which is supposed to remind me that fast-freeze is on is almost invisible in daylight and dim as a Toch H lamp in the dark. I only use fast-freeze when putting in a big batch of fresh stuff to freeze from scratch. Already-frozen items come home from the shops in a cool bag or box and get put straight in the freezer drawers without any thawing.

I've never done a serious analysis of what it's costing to run but in all honesty, I don't think the costs outweigh the convenience of having an efficient piece of kit which pretty much looks after itself.

Currently, due to shortage of kitchen space, my freezer is living in the conservatory where the temperature has been known to drop as low as 5C on winter nights and rise into the high 30s and beyond on summer days. According to the user handbook, its lowest recommended environmental temperature for optimal performance is 10C. With luck, the space problem will be resolved in the next few months and the freezer can come into the more moderate climate of the kitchen before any damage is done. I think the only models currently sold as suitable for use in sheds, garages or other cold environments are made by Beko.

HTH

[Scribbles]

Something I should have included above is mention of the only day-to-day maintenance problem I ever encountered with a self-defrosting appliance was when I noticed puddles of water forming in the bottom of my old Hotpoint fridge-freezer.

Some DiY investigation revealed that the little drain hose and drip tray at the rear had become clogged up with dust, grease and the odd dead spider. The appliance was over 30 years old at this point and owed us nothing but two or three times a year, we pulled the thing out of the awkward corner it occupied, cleaned out the drip tray and reamed out the little hose with a pipe cleaner. It continued to work well for a further 3 or 4 years until we pensioned it off at the time of a house move.

[Roger Hayter]

The advantage of having the top of the hose accessible inside the fridge or freezer, as it is in some models, is that it can be cleaned from inside with the machine in situ, and you really don't have to know what the inside of the evaporation tray looks like.

[T i m]

<snip>

Ok.

As long as I can time running the freezer down to finding the time to do the defrosting, I quite enjoy it. Armed with a hot air gun, some suitably sized containers and a wooden spatula I can do it quite quickly and be back up and running in no time (given what was left in the freezer would stay pretty frozen in our coolbox with the aid of some additional frozen cooler blocks, get the freezer back down to temp pretty quickly.).

Understood.

Ok, the sort of thing I would be going for I think.

I think conventional fixed-temperature freezers are pretty simple / reliable in general.

Oh?

When I over ordered the frozen stuff when daughter went shopping for us the other day, I did exactly the same thing with the guy next door. Luckily he had a 'spare' desktop freezer he leant me (like you do). ;-)

Again, same here on our old Zanussi. Funnily, I left the freezer door very slightly ajar for one of the very few times over the many years we have had it the other day (a multimeter lead got caught in it by accident) so I put it on boost just to catch up ... and only remembered it the next day when going to use it again.

Check.

There seems to be a bigger price discrepancy between what I assume to be more efficient freezers (thicker insulation, more sealed draws, more efficient compressor etc) and those that happen to also be auto-defrost.

We may also put one out in the lean-to (we don't have a fancy conservatory <g>) in the future and hence why I thought it might be worth considering now.

Yeah, I've seen similar figures mentioned.

Good luck with that then.

I think I've seen a few but they could have all be BeKo models. ;-)

Talking of Beko ... I wonder how important it is to have a freezer with a non-(inflammable)plastic back on it?

I believe our tumble dryer was 'good' in that being externally vented the heater filaments only ever saw fresh air so less chance of getting fluff back on it and them catching fire. Not so good for the running costs and the environment though (and partly why we haven't bothered repairing it this time).

Thanks for the feedback. I can carry on looking and including self defrosting models. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

Thanks for follow up. I am familiar with such as we have one on our Zanussi fridge and that has needed a pipe-cleaner (I got some extra long ones especially) a few times to clear it out.

Cheers, T i m

[RJH]

I really don't see why. The only time I've needed to defrost my (Beko) freezer in 10 years was when I left the door open accidentally. It's not exactly hard work, leaving a bowl in the bottom of the freezer, with a towel underneath. And it helped with my poor food-rotation management ;-)

On energy, it'd be useful if you can keep it somewhere cool. Mine's in a cellar, so it does save the cost of having to cool it that extra 10-15C. Although you do lose the convenience of easy access of course. I chose a Beko for the reason it could cope with low temperatures.

[RJH]

Ah, I didn't know about the ice building up on food. That does happen for some reason on bread in particular in my (non-FF freezer) - does a frost free stop that happening?

After my door open accident I bought a digital thermometer with an alarm - also make sure the freezer's operating within range (-18-22C).

[T i m]

<snip>

Yeah, I noticed a bit of buildup after leave our freezer door open a crack overnight recently.

Our has a little plastic chute you clip in the bottom edge that allows you to put a shallow container on the floor in front of the freezer and it drains into that. It's easy to then sponge the water out of the tray as needed. As you say, most of the water can be caught in a bowl and I generally accelerate the defrosting process using a hot air gun (from a safe distance from the freezer etc).You wouldn't need to do that if you had additional freezer capacity or good temporary storage (we use a camping cooler box that can just about freeze things if it's in a cold space and put the stuff in freezer bags and wrap with newspapers / towels).

This was something I hoped might improve if we had a bit more freezer space. I think there can be a critical volume for 'n' people and whilst that has been 'ok' for 30 years, the Covid thing has meant us not wanting daughter doing our shopping very frequently and so we have been buying more less frequently.

I would love as cellar (although the water table is pretty high here so it would have to be well tanked).

We have the fridge and freezer under the counter opposite the sink (galley kitchen). Didn't they call it the 'Magic triangle'? All very efficient / convenient for most food / hot beverage production. I did think of moving the fridge out of the kitchen and to where the (defunked) tumble dryer is, next door in the lobby ... but I'm not sure that even those few paces will be tolerable, after a fridge has been under counter for 40 years, even though it might be a bit more convenient being higher? I could try it I guess and I can always put it back if it doesn't 'work'.

Has there always been the option to get 'cold working' freezers as if not, how have all the 'std' freezers coped that are out in peoples (unheated) garages and other outbuildings (I've even seen them just outside under a simple plastic roof)?

Cheers, T i m

p.s. Does your Beko freezer have a metal or plastic back OOI Rob?

[Fredxx]

It's not very kind to the environment to own a tumble drier, especially a non-condensing one; where all the heat is generally piped outside.

Mine's a condensing one, which goes to heat the bedroom.

A convention freezer is more efficient, and while it might frost up it does so slowly, and continues to work after an inch of ice.

Any 'frost' in a frost free or self defrosting freezer tends to make it stop working.

[Fredxx]

A consequence of frost free is it dries its food contents. That water comes from somewhere, and it generally from outside or the food. Chicken is one thing I also change texture after being frozen in a frost free freezer.

Perhaps I ought to get one! And one for the fridge.

[Pancho]

Normal freezers dry food too. Use airtight containers to prevent it, or don't leave the food in too long.

[Scribbles]

?....Put simply, life's too short for all that

(Snip)

Why? Because, like I said, I loathe defrosting and, in the days before I discovered frost-free appliances, would simply ignore the task until so much ice - several inches - had built up that the doors wouldn't close. A bowl in the fridge and towels, etc around and under it never succeeded in containing all the meltwater. (I realise this says more about me than about the fridge/freezers but let's not go there).

Agreed - which is why, as soon as I have the grant of probate (application made 13 months ago & still waiting) on my late husband's estate and, thus, access to the funds put aside for the purpose, the kitchen will be extended and there will be space for the freezer.

[Fredxx]

Normal freezers also present a good door seal to the environment, but yes, an airtight container would reduce the drying out / burning of frozen food.

[RJH]

Ah, interesting, thanks. It would help if I wrapped things up more thoroughly.

The one I've got is a clone of this:

I paid a lot less than that. I taped the wire for the sensor between the body and door, and draped the sensor in the middle of the freezer. Not especially elegant but seems to work.

[Jeff Layman]

My Liebherr F/F has is frost-free for both the fridge and freezer. There is a fan which takes air from the freezer compartment and passes it over the evaporator, which removes water vapour in the air. There is no need to manually defrost it. As for drying food, all freezers do this to some extent, but I can't say the Liebherr is any worse in this respect. Ice cubes left in the container in which they are made do not appear to disappear over time if not used.

[AnthonyL]

I'm beginning to suspect that some of my freezer problems are a result of the door being left open (see some posts from some months back)

What did you get and is it reliable?

[NY]

Because of the difficulty of getting a wifi freezer thermometer to work (getting cable from sensor inside to transmitter outside the Faraday cage of the freezer, without affecting the door seal), we have a low-tech solution.

We have a couple of TPlink HS110 remote-control mains plugs which also monitor energy usage. I found a routine that runs on a spare Raspberry Pi which polls these plugs, producing a graph of usage over time. We've got into the habit of checking that graph every day, looking for any abnormalities in the graph; the normal usage is a steady cycle of m minutes on and n minutes off, punctuated by less frequent gaps and higher peaks as the freezers go through their defrost-and-refreeze frost-free cycle.

We set this up after one of our freezers in the garage stopped working. Luckily I noticed after about 12 hours when I went to put something in there, so we had a mass cook-up and refreeze of all the meat joints which were slightly soft but still pretty cold. We lived on a diet of prawn toast and other Chinese starters for a couple of days, because those were the only things that couldn't be cooked and then re-frozen. I think the only thing my wife had to throw away was a box of ice creams, so we got away lightly.

And before anyone says it, yes the freezer that broke *was* a Beko and *was* rated to work in winter ambient temperature. It had just packed up - I traced the wire right back to the sealed motor unit and there was power getting to the motor, but still it was not turning, so failed motor winding or failed thermostat within the motor/compressor housing. I couldn't find any other wire going to a remote thermostat elsewhere inside the freezer.

Interestingly, the big Beko freezer that we have outside (replacement for the one that failed) uses a lot less electricity than the smaller one that we have indoors. I wonder if it's more efficient or just because the ambient temperature is lower. We'll see how things change in the hot summer - assuming we get one!

[Fredxx]

Thanks for the link. I will investigate. This would be for a fridge that isn't mine, but one I seem to leave accidentally leave open on a regular basis!

It probably doesn't help that mine has a semi-latched door with a positive close mechanism, rather than just the normal passive magnetic strip.

[RJH]

Lidl, reference 270128. Seems reliable, but the menu isn't that intuitive and takes a bit of stabbing to check the min/max temperatures of the past 24 hours, and programming the alarm (which IIRC only kicks in around 0C - I'd rather it was say -10C). If I was buying again I'd look into that.