Crazy freezer idea

what about putting your food reserves in a deep freezer then filling with water and freeze the whole thing? That way your food would last a lot longer. You would put your food you use first and then work your way down as the ice melted. The only draw back I can see you would need your food to be in sealed containers to keep the water out. Things that would not float like bags of rice or sealed cans would work. I bet if you kelp the door closed things would be ok up to a month at least. What do you all think would it work?

 

Hmmm, I'd have to remove the bodies first....

 

To warm ice 1 degree F uses about 1/2 btu so ice is pretty bad about keeping below freezing.
So with in a day or 3 your freezer is going to be at 32F.

Maybe pack alternating layers of food and partially filled water bottles and line the ouside bottom and top with water bottles.

You really need hundreds of pounds of ice to make it last even a few weeks.
Just pack it full of thermal absorbing mass. To the point where where 1/3 to half the volume is food and the remainder ice when it's full.

 

Too much bulk to be practical.

 

Between (1) ice expansion being a problem; and (2) it won't melt the way you want t; I would not do that. By "it won't melt the way you want it" I mean that the bottom or sides could melt faster than the top (who's to say). Therefore, you might only be taking stuff that you can get to from the top, while meat that needs to stay frozen at the back you may not be able to get to and it goes bad.

 

Clarence Birdseye found out the hard way that if you are going to have true long time storage, the freezer temp has to be at least 0 fahrenheit, and as a kid the commercial cold storage places kept it down around 30 below 0. Ice stops a lot of bacteria growth but you still seem to get some physical changes. I have often wondered at what point it would be worth cooling your long term preps to prolong their life. MRE's seem to be very sensitive to high storage conditions. In hot truck storage, over 100 degrees, expected storage time is about 2 months, at 50 degrees, expected storage time is 5 years, and I would guess at 32 degrees it might be several times longer.

 

The thawing of frozen water absorbs more heat than almost all other frozen liquids. For the money, water/ice is extremely hard to beat for keeping things cold.

Now if you are wanting to keep frozen stuff frozen, then use salt water as the salt can lower the melting point. Here is a chart:

http://www.imsinc.co/_assets/docs/brine_freezing_chart.pdf

Put about 1 3/4 pounds of salt per gallon of water and the solution will freeze and thaw at about 6 degrees F. Fill 2 liter pop bottles a bit over 80% full, cap and lay on their side to freeze. Line the sides of the freezer with frozen bottles and put your meat in the middle.

If power goes out, pile blankets and/or an inch or two of additional foam insulation on top of freezer to improve the total insulation. Then don’t open it. As heat enters the freezer it will first thaw the water before the temp will increase enough to start thawing the meat. Depending on how good the freezer insulation is and how many bottles are in there, you can probably go 3-4 days and quite possibly more before the meat starts thawing.

AT

 

A British Thermal Unit (BTU) by definition is the amount of energy required to raise one pound of water one degree F. However, it takes 144 BTUs to melt one pound of ice. The ice will warm to it’s freezing temp but will stay stable at that temp (32F for fresh water) until melted at which point only then will the water start warming above the freezing point.
So you can see how effective ice is to keep stuff cold.

 

I thought about salt but I was assuming you might want to drink the water.

 

Brining solution?

 

Nope , BTU is out & math is also. , How the **** would you get out the shrimp ??

DUH
School is dropping the ball & they hire DUH instructors
S
2FF

 

Salt water won't stay frozen longer. It will phase change at a lower temperature.
If anything salt water ice with a higher temperature differential will thaw faster.

 

I wonder how funny the Boss will find this, when attempting to have a drink I "accidentally" added salt to. You see, they freeze bottles of water overnight in our horizontal refrigerator / freezer. They take those bottles to the fields with them, during the day. I am picturing her, oh, about midday, opening a bottle of salt water and taking a big swig from it.

Spoiler

On second thought, maybe that isn't such a good idea.

 

You are correct...i forgot to delete the reference to duration of frozen water after fact checking...the brining suggestion was a later insertion.

 

The rotation of food is far more practical compared to the expense of refrigeration/freezing.
I got busy with life and other things and didn't know the freezer had shut down and lost every thing. But this would not have happened if I had been using food out of it regularly and continuously replenishing it .
It is possible to put too much confidence in machinery .The set it and forget it mentality may well come back and bite ,and the price paid for the electricity a wasted investment. Post SHTF what are you going to do ?run a generator ,solar, other wise you need to cook all the food ASAP or make jerky of the meat .Or can the food in which case you may as well do it now.
Think about having to run a generator 24/7 to maintain freezers . and the generator needs service or finally burns out.
Secondly thawing out things will take more fuel/energy than foods that are already cooked and only need reheating (canned food) .
Thirdly, in a really long term situation you need the capacity to grow food .
What is happening in Venezuela should be a message to us all .

 

Rice is easily stored dry. I do put rice in the freezer for a week+ to kill the bugs prior to processing it into my food storage. I think freezing rice long term would be a waste of space. I do not have a big freezer (anymore) and have read many horror stories of freezers that stop working and people losing large investments in meat.

 

I have a 1500w 12VDC/120VAC inverter for the vehicles. My plan is to use it to keep the freezers cold with a 30 minute chill down a couple of times a day.

That's back up for if the primary generator won't crank.

I can barter help out a neighbor if needed as well.

 

Correct.

Yeah, a higher temperature gradient across the freezer’s insulation will slightly increase the heat transfer into the freezer and the salted ice would thaw slightly sooner. However, with unsalted water the ice and the meat thaw roughly concurrently. The advantage of using salt water is the salt water must pretty much all thaw before the freezer’s temp will increase to where the meat will then start thawing. That is what buys you time.

AT

 

I'd think temperature would be a big deal. Ice is actually an insulator of sorts.....the temperature maintaining 32 degrees or so. Part of winter survival training is dig a snow cave and stay in it. Long term freezer storage, as noted above, is best at zero or less. Our 8 freezers run zero to 5 below according to the thermometer/alarms on them.