When we moved house we took our tall fridge/freezer with us, knowing the kitchen in the new place only has space for an under counter fridge.
We ordered a new one and put the fridge freezer in the garage using the freezer section mainly.

This cold spell has seen the thermostat happy that the fridge is cold enough, so the freezer has been defrosting.
I don’t really want to fork out for a new freezer, just to cope with a few cold days/year when the fridge/freezer doesn’t function correctly.

My idea is this: buy a 20w bulb with holder & a plug in timer….stick the bulb in the fridge and set the timer to come on for 2hrs, twice a day (or similar).
This should heat the fridge suitably that the thermostat will kick the cooling circuit into life & keep the freezer frozen.

Good idea? Stupid idea? Can you see any major pitfalls? I will obviously need to monitor it and make sure it doesn’t get too hot, melting the plastic in the fridge or something……
It’s obviously not massively eco, but will only be for a few days/yr and has to be better than buying a new freezer….?!

It’s freezing outside

Just put your stuff outside

Jeeze, some people….

Not freezing enough it would appear…..! 🙂

Or leave the door open a bit?

I remember this was discussed years ago on tv – when people went on holiday and no-one opened the fridge door regularly the frezer defrosted. It’s a cheap crap design of fridge freezer 🙂

Quite agree – it must be a pretty shonky freezer if it can’t cope with a cold environment. The thermostat must be made of cheese or something.

Yeah, we left the door open in the last cold spell, but this time at -8 overnight I’m not sure it’ll be enough…

I don’t think its necessarily a crap design – from looking online they don’t recommend u put most fridge freezers in an unheated environment as they only have thermostats in the fridge part.

You have to buy a product specifically for that environment, based on its climate rating.

They don’t even recommend u put just freezers in unheated environments as they are more inefficient.

Globalti, yeah. Right. Whatever…

I don’t know the answer to your problem but if I were you I would invest in a thermometer rather than relying on observing whether the freezer is defrosting. The temperature should be minus 20, minus 15 at a push maybe, minus five is too warm. As I understand it.

e_l – yeah that’s true. I think we are going to chuck what’s in there as a matter of precaution….perhaps a thermometer would be a sensible idea!

Hot water bottle on the temp sensor in the fridge, twice a day? A bulb will probably take too long to warm the fridge. Or take the cover off the interior light and disable the sensor (I don’t know if it needs to be shorted out to make it run, or open circuit)

P.S (I’ve just clicked my first ad (deliberately) on STW…intrigued how they can get stereo sound into a single earbug (they don’t…its just mono)