Yesterday afternoon, I put some boxes from Costco into the freezer. I was pretty sure the door was closed all the way.
But just now, I went to my fridge for the first time since then, and the door wasn’t closed all the way. I’m not sure if it ever was, or if a box shifted and nudged the door open.
The things in there still seem to be frozen, like ice cubes and ground beef, and I think the freezer packs on the inside of the door are still hard, but there are frozen droplets of water aroun the rim of the ice cream carton in the front, and inside the ice cube tray. The chicken, wrapped in brown paper, has ice and water stains on the wrapper. I took an opened and very old bag of frozen peas and carrots out, and I could squish the peas between my fingers.
My main concerns are as follows:
The food.
The appliance itself, like the freezer motor.
My electric bill. (A somewhat distant third, but still on my mind.)
Any idea whether any of these are things I should be concerned about, and how to know either way? I rent if it’s relevant. Thanks in advance.
The food: not a problem. Your freezer was working fine, it was trying to freeze the whole room (which as you found out is actually a bit too much for the poor thing), but it never stopped having things inside it in a frozen state.
The motor: this would have to happen a lot and/or for a very long time for the motor’s life to be noticeably shortened.
The bill: again, for this to really show, it would have to become something regular. It was about equivalent to having the A/C or the heating at full blast for however many hours it’s been (we could work out the calculations if we had the power information for all three appliances but this isn’t a Physics or Engineering class, we don’t need exact values).
If everything is frozen you’re fine. Maybe use the food a little sooner than you would have otherwise. Maybe a little more degradation in texture of foods than normal. Maybe you’ll never notice.
Fridges are designed to run on 15 amp circuits. 15 amps at 110v for 24 hours = 39.6 kWh. A kWh runs about 8-18 cents in most of the USA. So the absolute maximum cost would be about $7.00. I’m sure your fridge wasn’t anywhere near that - that’s just a maximum calculation on the most electricity you could use on a single circuit without triggering the breaker.
I should clarify, by the way, that even though I posted after midnight, my “yesterday” meant that this could’ve been the case for up to 33 hours. I’m not sure what everyone assumed I meant,
But thanks for the replies either way. When I felt the ground beef was still hard, I hoped and assumed that at least my food would be okay, but I was also concerned about the fridge.