been wondering if this idea actually holds water
 

Hi all,

I been trying hard to challenge myself + my family in cutting down unneeded electricity usage (as much as possible, w/o spending too much on unnecessary upgrades, etc.) and one of the things I have in mind (and I need your expertise/experience on this so plse bear with me) is the idea of cutting down the electricity consumption on my chest freezer currently sitting/running in my separate car garage (unheated).

Say, for example: given a particular day, with typical freezer settings set to, say, -20C (just guessing, I don't have a thermometer for that yet) and the freezer cycles about, say, 6 times each @ 15mins (works out to 1.5hrs, just for the ease of calculation).

This freezer is currently about 45% filled.

Is it possible to cut down on cycling if I'm to fill the rest of the empty spots with water filled 2L pop bottles and then cut down the cycling further? (I can try by implementing a timer or so, thus limiting the cycling further (say, every 6hrs @ 15 mins each)?

What are you thoughts on this?

TIA.

Quest

Yes, filling your freezer with water jugs will reduce cycling. However, when it does cycle it will just turn on for longer. So, you really won't save much if any power.

I would suggest is checking the seals, cleaning and defrosting it, and turning the temperature up as much as you are comfortable with. When I had a chest freezer, I turned it up all the way and it was still below 0F. I keep my fridge freezer at 5F.

Defrosting my chest freezer resulted in a 5% reduction in energy consumption (it was pretty bad admittedly). Turning the temperature up resulsted in another 8% reduction in energy consumption.

Insulate it! Build a foam box around it, put foam on the lid with a lip extending below the seal (the seal is usually the thermal Achilles heel of a fridge or freezer). Just make sure that you don't block the airflow to and from the radiator. Also, if the space between the radiator and freezer wall/bottom is large enough, you can put some thin insulation there, maybe with a radiant barrier on one side.

Something more extreme would be to hack it: Replace the radiator with a larger one and mount it farther away from the freezer's side.

With a timer you should watch out, because the temperature may rise too high. How hot does the garage get in the summer? Maybe you could move the freezer to the house/basement, or turn it off completely, during the hottest months?

I have read postings about people buy a freezer (chest type) with super good insulation,
then sticking a temperature sensor inside, that controls the AC power input..

Basically changing the setpoint above freezing.. Then using the chest as a regular refrigerator.
The people who do this kind of stuff might live down-under, in the outback? OTG on PV.

Xringer, you can just get a replacement thermostat for chest freezers which turn them into refrigerators.

I don't think that type of icebox works for old folks.. Bad backs ya know.. :rolleyes: