Freezer - Upright vs. Chest

I like the upright. If i had the money I would buy a walk in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hope you find what makes you happy.

If I REALLY had a choice, I'd want those European type freezers. There's an appliance store here that has them and I drool over them. But they are soooooo expensive.

Various examples:

http://www.kitchenlav.com/Original%2...s/SP6DSSTB.jpg

http://www.argos.co.uk/wcsstore/argo...EUC487838M.jpg

http://www.olino.org/wp-content/uplo...-diepvries.jpg

http://images.productserve.com/previ...7/31349544.jpg

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good gets lost and spoils in chest freezers..i would never have one..we have 2 uprights and one small chest..i hate the chest one..Ron uses it for hot peppers and some bread..i hate it..won't even open it.

I prefer the chest type. I just purchased a new one, a Frigidaire, it has compartments in the bottom and 3 trays on top that roll. My old chest freezer was 19 years old and still working just fine, I upgraded for a larger one and gave the old one to a friend. In the 19 years I had it my MIL went through 2 uprights. In my experience, the chest just last longer and friends who have uprights wish they had the chest type.

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Faith is the strength by which a shattered world shall emerge into the light. Helen Keller

Thanks for the replies. So far all the new upright freezers I've looked at have locks on the door and many of them have some sort of alarm as well. I should have looked at the energy use labels on both the upright and chest freezers I was looking at recently to see how much difference there was. I also noticed that all the upright freezers are downsized from the old style we had years ago. The new ones are much shorter in height.

I wish I knew definitively that the new freezers really do use that much less energy than the older ones. One would think that is the case but I have not really heard any net-new breakthroughs on compressor technology or insulating techniques that may lead to truly lower energy consumption. I wonder how long it would take to recoup the increased purchase price of a new freezer vs an older freezer from craigslist.

Something else to consider in the debate is that in a power outage the chest freezer stays frozen longer....even if you have to open it.

I agree you do not want frost free either...some of the stuff would be getting frezer burn in a month with ours.

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Give Blood it saves lives.

Hi,
While it seems sensible that the chest type loses a lot less heat when you open it up, if you calculate the heat loss per each opening of the door of an upright, the numbers are not so large...

(14 cf)(0.070 lb/cf)(70F - (-10F) (0.24 BTU/lb-F) = 18 BTU if you lose every bit of cold air in the fridge when you open the door -- this is about 0.005 KWH per door opening.

It seems too low, so maybe I'm missing something?

Anyway, I would look carefully at the yellow energy use tags they put in all the fridges these days -- there is a lot of variation. The Energy Star site has a downloadable list of all of them.

Gary

We have had both kinds, but I absolutely prerfer a chest-type freezer over an upright for the same reasons as have already been mentioned above.

Our latest and greatest was a display model from Lowes. It had a nicked bottom corner- I asked if they would sell it at a discount because it was the only one of that size they had left. They agreed to take 60% off the price, so I purchased it for a great deal and it was otherwise brand new. That was several years ago and it is still going strong. Maybe you can do something like that and save a bundle on the purchase?

Best of luck!

Lauren
http://www.hendrickshearth.etsy.com

Sears has them on sale now, check out their website. If you are interested in a larger one for the same price!

I have both an upright and a humongous chest freezer. We keep the chest plugged in all the time and only use the upright as 'overflow' during the fall deer harvest/pig, turkey & chicken butchering season until there is enough room to fit everything in the chest freezer again. Our upright is old (got it at an estate sale in 1991--it's avocado green) and is not nearly as energy efficient as the newer uprights. It was our only freezer until about 2000, when it just wasn't big enough for our growing family and we were able to get a great deal on a scratch & dent chest freezer.

Some tips for living with a chest freezer:
--I use plastic crates to keep things sorted into: one for beef, one for pork, one for chicken, one for venison, one for veggies, one for sausage, one for burger, etc. When I want to get out pork, I do have to lift up the venison crate on top, but it's not that big of a deal since I'm still relatively young and strong. I find this an easy way (segregating the meat) to keep track of how much of each type we have at a glance.

--I try to keep about two weeks worth of frozen stuff in the freezer in my kitchen so the chest freezer only needs to be accessed a couple times a month. This makes cold-air loss even less because the deep freeze door rarely gets opened.

--we pretty much eat everything in the freezer in a year's time. Most of the veggies are from the garden, so get put in during the summer and then eaten in the next 9 months. Same w/the meat; it is homegrown/hunted so is filled at approx the same time each year and then eaten up by the time the season comes around again. All meats get wrapped in freezer paper and marked with type & cut of meat as well as date. Any surplus from the previous year gets put on top of the current year's harvest to be used first.

An added bonus of a chest freezer is that when it dies, you can haul it out to the barn. They make excellent critter proof bins to keep grains & other livestock feed in.

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Kris
http://thislittleplacehere.blogspot.com/

Interesting, if the energy ratings are to be believed, the uprights don't cost that much more per year to operate. This is not exact because there doesn't seem to be any apples to apples comparisons in terms of cu ft. For example: 7.2 cu ft chest = $25 per year compared to a 7.5 cu ft upright at $30. Or: 14.8 cu ft chest = $38 per year vs. 14.1 upright = $47 per year.

I just transferred everything out of my old chest freezer into a newer upright. The upright is larger, but holds less (a lot less). I gave the old chest freezer to my son, now I wish I'd have kept it and gave him the newer larger upright.

This is my first upright, and I don't like it at all. If I get a chance to go back to a chest type, I'll do it in a heartbeat.

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When we had our chest freezer, the lid instantly became more counter space.

So, if you needed to get in it, you had to move all the stuff somewhere else.

UPDATE!

That was over 3 1/2 years ago I organized my big upright with the plastic drawers. The drawers have NOT gotten brittle, everything is wonderfully organized, easy to rotate by date, and I never lose anything!!

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Ladycat! thanks for the update! that's great!

I've had both, prefer my current upright.

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I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
The Cloud
Percy Bysshe Shelley

I vote for chest. Chest is best!

If I had a chest I would get an upright. If I had an upright I would get a chest, if I needed 2. 1 of each. Upright is easier to find what you want, chest is more economical. Put the things you have a lot of in a chest freezer but put a few in the upright. Use the upright for daily use and the chest more as storage. We use a lot of hamburger so I filled part of a chest full to the top in the bage I brought it home in. If you are short the chest type is hard to reach the bottom and what you need/want is always in the bottom. I have a chest type 12 volt refrigerator, I love it. It is shallow and I can see the top of everything, no moving the front stuff to find what is hidden....James

I would say that is true if you don't open it often. An upright dumps the cold air on the floor everytime it is opened. If you had 2, or a refer/freezer and kept some things in there and didn't open the freezer a lot, an upright isn't bad....James

I have both, and prefer the chest. I use the upright for dog food, which is in boxes so that little to no space is wasted.

When I butcher I put the meat into color-coded cotton duck bags. Chicken is yellow, beef = red, pork = pink, goat = green and lamb = purple. Fish is alway bought and is blue. I vacuum seal everything that goes in there, and the cut type and date of cutting is written on each pack. That keeps me pretty well organized.

Mary