Dodged a bullet today!

[CoSwede]

I am typically out of town a few days each week. Each time I come back home I typically head out to the garage and check on the freezers. Got home a bit late last night and went straight to bed. This morning I got up and went out to check on my freezers and was startled to see a pool of blood at the bottom of my moose freezer! I couldn’t believe my eyes and did a quick assessment of the damage. I had some bulk pack meat for future grinding on the bottom that had gotten soft but the steaks/roasts/ground stacked in crates was still pretty solid. I figured I must have caught it pretty quick. Did a quick check of the outlets – check. Checked to make sure the cords weren’t loose – check. Even went so far as to give the freezer a good kick – check. That’s about as far as my appliance repair skills go. It was an older Montgomery Wards model so I wasn’t too terribly surprised it had given up the ghost. Had planned on replacing it soon anyways. No other troubleshooting required as it was time to focus on fixing the problem at hand. My other freezers were all full so I had to find a new one. Off to Lowes and all I could find in stock was an upright so I got that (needed one for business anyway) and I ordered a 21 cubic foot chest to that wouldn’t arrive for two more weeks. Got the upright home and unloaded next to the dead freezer and transferred all the meat over and plugged it in – nothing… Uh oh… That leaves only one thing I didn’t check which was my extension cord. Sure enough, I swapped out cords and the old Monkey Ward freezer kicked back on as well as the new upright. All is right again with the world… Oh, why did I dodge a bullet? Because in a few more days I’m heading to AK for two weeks for halibut and had the freezer (or extension cord) decided to act up during that time I would surely have been less than lucky coming home to rotting moose and pissed off friends and neighbors who benefit from my luck and who whould not be impressed with the stench coming from the garage. Besides, now I have extra room for more halibut and crab! I am a believer that the timing of bad luck can sometimes be considered good luck. I consider myself very lucky to have dodged this bullet and will be buying temp alarms to catch this if it were ever to happen again.

 

[theCaptain]

i have had this happen to me twice with not so much luck. Glad you caught it in time.

 

[Fatcamp]

This place taught me about temperature alarms.

Losing our freezer is one of the things that haunts me when we leave town.

 

[robby denning]

Good deal. Lost a freezer full of deer and just as bad, hours and hours of my wife’s labor making freezer meals. Was hard to haul that to the dump


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[benjamin.kugel]

I have a hard enough time tossing out forgotten leftovers from the back of the fridge. Losing a stocked freezer sounds devastating. I think I'll follow your lead and pick up a temp alarm

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[pods8 (Rugged Stitching)]

Temp alarms are CHEAP peace of mind. Folks say they even have wifi ones that'll ping a phone, I make consider upgrading in case we're away and there is a power issue we can call in a friend.

 

[Titan]

After losing everything in my freezer I started using a smart outlet. If my hub doesn't receive power consumption updates every 4 hours it will send me a notification as well as a text.

 

[Where's Bruce?]

We use temp sensors in our nine freezers and eight refrigerators. Own a commercial kitchen. <g>

 

[Scrappy]

I know this probably goes without saying but I wouldn't feel right if I didn't mention it. If you are using an extension cord on your appliances make sure they are the right size to hand the load. I know we are discussing lost meat but it could be a lot worse if the whole house burned down.

 

[acbone710]

After losing everything in my freezer I started using a smart outlet. If my hub doesn't receive power consumption updates every 4 hours it will send me a notification as well as a text.

Great tip! I had an extra power monitoring smart plug laying around and now I know exactly where it's going!

 

[OXN939]

Great tip! I had an extra power monitoring smart plug laying around and now I know exactly where it's going!

Anyone have a link to the product you use?

 

[Titan]

I used a samsung smartthings outlet. $30 or so I think.

But I already had a smartthings hub. Setting up the auto-check rule was fairly easy as well.

 

[camping1601]

After losing everything in my freezer I started using a smart outlet. If my hub doesn't receive power consumption updates every 4 hours it will send me a notification as well as a text.

Can you adjust the time period which it doesn't receive consumption updates?

 

[Titan]

Yes, you can put anything you want in there. I know some people were using hourly checks. Mine just "checks in" every 4 hours. I figure 4-8 hours is plenty of time to do something about it.

 

[acbone710]

This is the one I have, however I am not running the stock firmware, so I am not sure if the default app would be able to run an automation to notify you. I am running Home Assistant, which is an application that acts like a smart hub. Happy to help if you have any other questions!

 

[Sawfish]

I have an old MW chest freezer that I bought in 1979. It has survived a cross country move and is still kicking.

 

[walleye26]

I am glad that I read about temp alarms. I had no idea they existed. I am definitely going to get a few next week. I had a boss who had some clients donate a bunch of venison after whitetail season. He had it in a fridge/freezer at work that crapped out over a weekend. He had me and an associate clean it up the blood trail and he wanted us to throw it out assuming the venison had gone bad. When I checked it it was still in good shape which netted the associate and I a nice addition to our freezers. Felt a little bad after the fact but figured I had saved the meat knowing my boss would have left it in the freezer until it was freezer burned.

 

[ryan80]

I lost about 80 pounds of sushi grade bluefin and yellowfin tuna I caught on a long range boat out of San Diego when my freezer died, to say nothing of the venison, homemade sausage, etc. Absolutely heartbreaking. Freezer was less than a year old!