Large Upright Freezer is dying!

Primrose

its 40+ yrs old, three quarters full & interior temperature steadily rising but hoping  to keep it alive until Monday when replacement arrives.  Given 24 hrs needed to get new one down to Temperature , hints please on how we manage if old freezer completely dies before then and how to manage the swap over.  Can,t see how we can keep food frozen if freezer needs to be empty and defrosted so that deliverers can take old one away at the same time.  How do people manage in this scenario?  At what temperature is it pointless storing the food in dying freezer any longer? 

All our  eighbiurs' freezers full because of Coronavirus stock ups so not a good time for this to happen! 

gwynlas

Drop your fridge temperature to its coldest setting, remove shelves and stack frozen food in there, do not open door, put sticky tape over if to help you remember. We managed without fridges years ago with butter milk, cheese etc kept in a pantry. If you have not got a pantry things can be boxed up and stored in a cool shed or garage.
Do you know anyone with cool boxes?

newlywed

Our bathroom is the coldest room with no windows so the night before we stacked it all in the bath in cool bags where we could, with loads of ice blocks and frozen water bottles, then covered it all with a couple of layers of blankets to keep it cold.

Our new freezer didn’t need 24 hours before we could use it.

do any neighbours have spare cool bags and ice blocks you could borrow? Assuming they aren’t going on any picnics for a few days of course?

PipneyJane

You have my sympathy.  Our fridge-freezer died in the middle of August 2018.  

@gwynlas has given you some good advice.  Freezers are insulated and it is perfectly possible to keep frozen food frozen for 24 hours IF left sealed and undisturbed.

What I did was to pack the freezer contents into one large cool bag on the day our replacement arrived and put that in the coldest place in the house.  The delivery drivers told me to let the new one settle for 6 hours before switching on.  (They made me promise!)  Once it said it had reached temperature (after it had been on for an hour or two), I packed everything back into the freezer.  Although no longer perfectly frozen, it was all still very cold and rather icy, so I took the risk with freezer burn etc. 

- Pip 

thriftwizard

If you don't have a cool bag & the temperature in the freezer gets too high, bundle everything tightly together in a cool spot and wrap it in every wool blanket, sleeping bag, eiderdown, throw etc. you possess, underneath as well as on top & around. I've done this a few times whilst defrosting our chest freezer & it keeps it insulated enough. Even newspaper would help, though you'd need a lot.

Farway

Remember you can cook some of the more expensive items perhaps, then freeze cooked once your replacement arrives