Chest freezer energy consumption

[Badfish740]

According to the Energy Star website my chest freezer should only cost about $6 a month to run (Frigidaire Crown Series 24.9 cubic feet) but I'm skeptical. Is that $6 a month estimate kind of like the way GM used to do horsepower ratings in the 1960s (Horsepower measured at the flywheel with no accessories attached to the engine, no exhaust, and no air filter)? Even though I bought the thing barely used for $100 (ice cream store went out of business) she has been worried about upping our already annoyingly high electric bill after a co-worker put it in her head that chest freezers eat a lot of juice. In an attempt to keep electricity usage at a minimum I'm slowing filling the currently empty freezer with plastic 1 gallon jugs (the kind milk and spring water come in) filled with water. By the time I'm done the freezer will have 40 gallons of ice to serve as a "cold sink." The 40 jugs fill the freezer halfway so I'll pile food on top of them and as I need more room begin to pull them out. I would imagine that there will always be at least 10-15 gallons in there because unless I start buying entire sides of beef I'm never going to completely fill it. I figure that the other plus of always having lots of ice on hand is that if we ever have an extended power outage I can pull some out and put it in my upstairs refrigerator/freezer in order to preserve the food in it. On a humorous note my wife has taken to calling the unfinished side of the basement "The Bunker" since it now contains a massive supply of non-perishable foods (pantry), a freezer, and of course, firewood

 

[billb3]

6 dollars sounds about right.

somewhere there is usally a typical kwh rate the estimate is based on

you don't have to try to displace every single molecule of air.
although, should the power go out every bit of mass should help keep the temp up longer


I have a chest freezer full of back yard grown blueberries, rasberries, frozen peaches, frozen rhubarb, squash, string beans and a couple 6 to8 pound chickens I bought at 79cents a pound on sale.

 

[Badfish740]

I have a chest freezer full of back yard grown blueberries, rasberries, frozen peaches, frozen rhubarb, squash, string beans and a couple 6 to8 pound chickens I bought at 79cents a pound on sale.

Sounds good-I'm psyched because now I don't have to worry about how much room I have during doe season. I only took one this year because it was before I bought the chest freezer and we were running out of room as it was in the upstairs freezer. The meat from an average 120 lb doe fits into two tightly packed paper grocery bags, so now I have room for three or four with a ton of space left! My wife also likes to make homemade stock whenever she cooks a whole chicken so it will be a good place to store that too.

 

[Highbeam]

Now you can buy more ice cream too. We fill ours up with butter, ice cream, meat, and veggies(homegrown) bought at killer prices during sales.

Oh and turkey, you buy turkey near Thanksgiving for cheap but the rest of the year it is super high.

I went to a large 20CF or so upright freezer and didn't notice anything significant on our bill.

 

[benjamin]

$6 a month sounds a little high to me, depending of course on your electric rate. Get a Kil-a-watt for about $25, or borrow from some libraries, and know for sure.

 

[Gooserider]

Does the freezer have a real solid, insulated lid like a typical home unit, or the sliding glass / plastic lid I see on a lot of product dispensing freezers in places like ice cream parlors, or the like? If it has the easy access lid, it probably uses more energy than normal, as they design those with access as first priority and don't worry all that much about efficiency... If so, you can probably help the bill by making a secondary foam cover to reduce the heat gain.

SOME freezers can be helped by the addition of extra foam insulation on the sides as well, but be careful that you don't have one that hides the condenser coil under the shell, which some modern units do...

Gooserider

 

[jzr1]

my kill-a-watt says it uses $10 a month I think its 10 or 15cf. Its only 3 years old Kenmore.

 

[Badfish740]

Does the freezer have a real solid, insulated lid like a typical home unit, or the sliding glass / plastic lid I see on a lot of product dispensing freezers in places like ice cream parlors, or the like? If it has the easy access lid, it probably uses more energy than normal, as they design those with access as first priority and don't worry all that much about efficiency... If so, you can probably help the bill by making a secondary foam cover to reduce the heat gain.

It's a regular old residential model-they just used it to store tubs in the back. I was having some issues with it getting cold enough though. Going on the principle of "a full freezer uses less juice" I decided to fill mine with solid ice-not a good idea. Before I started it up I filled it with 30 one gallon milk and water containers full of tap water. After it was having a hard time getting cold with all 30 containers I took out 15 of them-it still would only get down to 10 degrees. At that point I was cursing myself for spending $100 on the thing. Sometime later I decided to take 10 more out. That did the trick. Since then the temperature has been dropping 1 degree about every 10 minutes. I have it on the coldest setting so I'll see what it gets down to and then adjust from there. From what I've read 0 degrees is fine for preserving foods up to 12 months.

 

[billb3]

I filled mine part way with 10 water jugs when it was new (so there would be something in there) . It took almost 36 hours to freeze solid that much water. IIRC.
I thought there was something wrong so I put a freezer thermometer in there .

It did get there, though.

If I process more than four trays of vegetables / berries (12 - 15 quarts) other stuff in the freezer will start thawing as that stuff freezes.

Sometimes I'll use the fridge freezer to freeze a bit more than 4 trays and add that to the big freezer when it's all frozen.

 

[woodsmaster]

I put my chest freezer in an unheated building so it really only runs for about 8-9 months out of the year.