So one might think that a "cubic foot" is a "cubic foot", but I think there might be some marketing tactics at play with the new chest freezers.

I have a 15year 5 cubic foot Frigidaire and I was looking to replace it with a "small one"...aka 5cf or 7cf.

I will have to bring my tape measure, but the new ones on display that I looked at today seemed like they were a bit undersized, anyone else experience this?

Metric foot.

They look undersized due to modern technology with compressors etc. That 15 yr old unit has a compressor that could run a new full size freezer.

 

I know this doesn't answer your question but why not get an upright freezer ? I can't stand our chest freezer. My next one will be an upright. I hate digging through the chest style to find what's in there.

 

We solved that problem with stackable containers. Last beef we put in th 22 cf chest, we took everything out, discarded what needed gone, and sorted by container everything that went back in. No more digging! Just lift containers out until you get what you need.

Another trick that worked ok for me was to use those milk crate type plastic stackable crates that office depot sells.
Meat went into one and vegies in another etc.  

When I wanted whatever was in the bottom just lift out the top crate then lift out the bottom crate.  

Digging through one small crate was much less trouble than unloading the whole freezer one package of carrots at a time.

Here is my experience with chest and upright freezers.

Many, many years ago we bought a chest freezer and both of us hated digging thru it to find what we wanted. When we moved we donated it and bought an upright freezer. The upright freezer is convenient and everything is easily accessible and we loved it, until the power went out.

Every time you open the door all of the cold air falls out of the freezer requiring the freezer to cool the warmer air that replaced it. In normal times this is not a problem, but when the power goes out, this becomes a huge problem. What we do now is have both. A chest freezer for long term storage and an upright for weekly ease of use. I'm not sure I will replace the upright when it goes but the wife might want me to, she seems to like the ease of use much, much more.

Oh and i am SO stealing the idea of the milk crates for the chest freezer!

I always looked up to you, but I didn't know you were a genius.



 

I hope it works well for you guys

Funny, Frigidaire has new Freezers coming out that will have baskets on an internal track system along with adjustable dividers in the bottom.

So I went back to the store with a tape measure and a camera. Turns out, it was a optical illusion and a different shape than my current 5 cubic foot chest freezer.



It was sandwiched between two larger chest freezers (right one was a 14cf), and it is a little bit shorter than my current unit. So by comparison it looked tiny, and actually was 2.5 inches shorter and was not as thick on the sides (insulation); but it made up the cubic feet in the overall length and width that it lacked in height.

Going to have to pony up the cash for the larger 14cf freezer.

You might want to mount your new freezer on rollers, so that you can get behind it to clean it and unplug it when you need to.

I am in the process of looking for a new freezer.  We currently have 2 chest freezers, one is very large and old and is on deaths door.  The other is small.  I am thinking about making a Keezer out of the small one and getting an upright but looking back over the past few decades, we never lost meat in a chest freezer, only uprights.

If the savings in energy are that great, then logic says buying a chest freezer larger then you need is fine.  I also use milk crates in the chest freezers.  Small one tends to hold precooked foods, large one gets the raw meats.

Yes the bigger ones can be filled with water jugs lining the bottom. The fuller you keep the freezer the more efficient it is. Also, that's a way to keep several gallons of fresh water.



 

We use plastic / grocery bags. Like others here clipboard with inventory. We also have a list on the frige freezer, cross off when removed from deep freeze and house list for inventory. Used X in pork chops and roast, time to reorder.

This.

We have a chest freezer in our garage. Not sure of the footage though. My is is short and she HATES having to dig through it because she nearly falls into it when fishing around for something on the bottom.

Just last week we bought a 16 cbf  upright fridgidaire and love it. Has lots of room and nothing fancy. We didn't want any digital readouts or temp controls. Just a basic knob to adjust the temp.

Yup. My son left our chest freezer lid completely open one night. I didn't discover it till the next morning, almost 12 hours later, because it's in the garage. I generally keep ice packs, bags of ice, ice bottles and Flavor Ice on top. I keep it pretty full as well. None of the bags of ice had melted ice or refrozen puddles in them. Try that with a stand up.


eta: It wasn't even running when I found it.

What I wouldn't do to get my hands on some affordable priced 6-gallon milk crates... they're impossible to find around here and cost prohibitive to ship...

Yes, milk crates is what I use in the freezers... but unlike some people that group like-items in baskets I prefer to do it differently. I prefer to group items in a "mix". Yes, all my beef stays in a few baskets, all my pork in others, etc, but within a beef basket I like to make a mix of steaks, roasts, ground beef etc so that I don't necessarily have to dig every time I want something. Right on top is a basket that has a little of everything, and right under that is another basket with the exact same mix of stuff.

As far as chest vs. upright. I'll happily deal with the minor inconveniences of a chest freezer for the added insurance etc. Anecdotal story: I once went to Florida to visit a friend for a week. I was working out of town right up to Sunday afternoon. Made a 7 hour drive home, got home around 1 am, took a quick 1 hour nap, woke my wife up and packed up the car to leave. In my sleep-deprived state, and rush to get on the road to beat morning rush-hour through the city that was a couple hours away I somehow managed to leave the lid of the deep-freezer open. I returned a week later, saw it and thought, "hmm, that's weird, I don't remember opening that a minute ago.... OH SHIT" rush over, check everything out... freezer sitting there chugging away... everything inside is still frozen except a thing of ice-cream on top that melted, and some other items that were partially thawed (but still below safe temps). I left my freezer open for an entire week, yes, a FULL WEEK while on vacation and the only thing that was actually lost was a tub of ice-cream... do that with an upright and report back...

Parents had an upright in the basement while I was working at making frozen pizzas.  For not much money each week or few weeks I could buy a case of frozen pizza for cost that had something wrong with it and could not be sold to public or sent to schools or whatever, we did the school pizza and several brands of frozen pizza you see in the stores.



Filled it up cheaply and mostly used it for the frozen pizza.



Plug got pulled out a tad, it was in washroom with plug by the washing machine and I forget how it got tugged out a tad but it did get tugged out a tad.



Was not noticed till everything unfroze.



Easiest way to clean freezer is plug it back in and let it freeze the nasty and then get most of it out and unplug it and do the final cleaning as it unfreezes ungain.



So, I only like chest freezers.



Have a small one just like what is pictured and sometimes it is used as a fridge and sometimes it is used as a freezer.  I also have a larger one, not sure how big but basically if you have a couple different sizes you can make the most of the space in the freezers if you use them up and empty them out.   Basically I could fill everything up and empty the little one first and then use out of the big one until it fits in the little one and swap everything to the little one and then refill the big one and keep a rotation going.



I am far too lazy to actually have that concept up and running since I just moved several months back and did not want to move full freezers.



I also agree with the concept that 2 is one, but if using all your freezer space it would be hard to deal with a freezer needing replaced if everything was full.