Frost Free Freezer

GeoffIvah

My 75 year old widowed sister has bought a Hotpoint Frost Free Freezer. It was faulty on delivery and an engineer was sent to repair it. He told her a garage was not suitable for this type of freezer as it would defrost if the temperature fell below 9C. We had never heard of this, common advice is site freezers in a cool place to reduce running costs.
Enquiries off the supplier and manufacture have confirmed that the advice is correct. There is no mention of this in the brochures or with the product on delivery. Neither party will swap the freezer as they say if she had asked she would have been told. What would make you ask such an illogical question?
My question is; has anybody come across this problem and found a way of bringing either seller or manufacturer to task? It is worrying my sister as she really has nowhere else to put it and risks losing her produce in the winter.

outbidder

Local BBC radio station consumer programmes love to get their teeth into this kind of thing. What is your local station? I would check their website and contact them.

nearlyrich

I have a Bosch FF freezer in my unheated utility room at the back of the garage, it's been there for about 5 years and I have never had a problem with it defrosting.

shown73

I've heard of this many times, and to an extent it's true. I think, and if I'm wrong I'm sure someone will correct me, that the problem occurs if the ambient temp in the garage falls below the working temp of the freezer, which then goes into defrost mode to try to compensate. This is not as far fetched as it may seem, since freezers operate at, I think, -5 or so. Having said that, I can't see the problem occurring at +9C, perhaps he meant -9C, and there has been a misunderstanding. Depends a lot on where in the country you live, I suppose.

speedyjoe

The problem is, as I understand it, only a problem for fridge freezers with a single thermostat only in the fridge compartment. These only have a single compressor as well.

It is caused when the the ambient temperature drops below that at which the fridge - not the freezer - normally runs. So the thermostat says "oh the fridge is cold enough I won't turn the compressor on" Consequently the freezer, which should of course be much colder than the fridge, defrosts.

You can get twin compressor models which do not have this problem. These are of course more expensive.

lolly5648

Yes we found this out by bitter experience. Moved a 2 year old fridge freezer to garage, stocked it up and then found freezer had defrosted and food was ruined.