Thinking about Hurricane prep for the weekend. Both of my freezers have a layer of gelpaks on the top that are good for about a 4.5 hour power outage. And my initial thought was to add a layer of water-filled ziplock bags tonight to provide a longer hold-out.
I’ll also turn the temp to the coldest setting tonight so everything has a way to go before it reaches the spoiling zone.
But what about dry ice? How long will it last in the freezer? I imagine they’ll be sold out by Sat morning, and the hurricane is due to hit Sat night. I remember once we were out of power for six days. Is it possible to keep things cold that long with dry ice?
What is the reasonable outside limit for protecting the food in there? Other tips or hints?
Use a cooler or coolers instead of the freezer, which should be full of cold frozen stuff with dry ice on top. Wrap the coolers with blankets w/ foam underneath.
A generator or large voltage inverter hooked up to a car battery (you will need to run the car) can run your freezer also.
If you start loosing the battle over keeping things cold or even before seek out any emergency shelters and bring your food there, those people can use it.
We had our power go out for a few days a couple of months ago. I bought a 3 pound block of dry ice and it lasted approximately 48 hours in the freezer. It managed to keep the actual ice frozen and it didn’t freeze things like milk, so I considered it a win overall.
Here’s a warning though. They told me at the store to NOT put any glass containers into the same compartment as the dry ice because it will shatter.
the dry ice will freeze things nearby to it. freezing in a glass container likely will break the glass. that is a good warning on the part of the store and good for you to pass on.
We keep a few plastic jugs filled with water and frozen in our freezer for power outage emergencies. Leave a bit of space at the top when filling them. If you have a chest-type freezer and are careful about not opening it too often, this will keep things cold for a few days at least. If you have advance warning, use as many as there is space for (square/rectangular shaped ones will fit more efficiently than round jugs), and put them in the bottom where they will stay frozen longest.
OK, so dry ice is really only useful as a booster if we get into the 2-3 day zone.
So, long term storage on the bottom, layer of gelpaks and frozen ziplocks. (The ziplocks are a really great idea, because you can put them in a layer while squishy and unfrozen thus sort of sealing off the part underneath from the effects of opening the freezer.) Then the meals I plan to use for the first day or two on the very top.
When prepping for a storm, any open space in my freezer gets filled with bottles of water. The more frozen mass you have in there, the longer it will last.
Ziplocks will do the same thing for you…and as you point out, conform to size better. Just make sure they are well sealed so they don’t leak when they defrost.
If you plan to stage food into coolers, you could bag them up as Day 1, Day 2, etc…so you minimize the amount of time the freezer needs to be open.
-D/a
If you use dry ice with a plastic chest type cooler, make sure the dry ice is covered in newspaper; if it contacts the wall of the cooler it can crack the plastic.
Since those need to be taken out and defrosted anyway, I would move them to the fridge or to coolers as soon as you know the storm is hitting. That way you won’t need to open the freezer to grab them once the power is out.
If it’s a stand alone freezer it may be a tossup, but a standard fridge/freezer combo Id go with the coolers.
The freezer has metal heat exchange pipes in direct contact with the cold air inside and warm air on the outside, and a fairly large magnetic seal which is not insulated.
A cooler has none of that and the seal is much better. But the cooler has to be large to have a large as possible volume of cold stuff.
Additionally you can easily supplement insulation around and under a cooler and block all convective currents with that insulation, with the other you can’t as there are internal air spaces that can’t be accessed.
The other advantage to using a cooler, or actually multiple coolers or cooler/freezer combo, is you can set it up so you only open the one you need for the time, leaving the rest sealed.