Many years ago, our fridge died on a Friday night right after grocery shopping. Our immediate solution was a cheap, small, Walmart chest freezer.
We bought a new fridge on Monday. After we got the new fridge, I told FiL he could use the freezer. Now I’m ready to trash the freezer. It has started leaking. FiL filled up the freezer and promptly started putting stuff in the normal fridge freezer.
The chest freezer is now half full of old stuff, frozen in a solid block of ice. After attacking it with a hammer, chisel, and pry bar, I gave up.
I need to defrost it , empty it, and dispose of it.
My current plan it to unplug it, shove it onto the deck.
But, I don’t want bugs, especially maggots.
My plan is to put it on the deck and pour a bunch of bleach in it.
Any better suggestions?
Put it outside and fill it with water. A cup or two of bleach wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Hmm. My thinking would be near yours.
Drag it out. Let it thaw.
Bleach? Yeah. That sounds exactly like what I’d do.
How warm is your weather?
I’m afraid if its left too long there will be pestilence.
The lump of solids should go in trash bags aa soon as you can lift hunks of it.
Unplug, defrost, and clean it, but wherever you store it, keep it upright in its current possition, do not lay it over on the side or it may not work again. Fridges and freezers are touchy about that..
Sounds to me like the OP is trashing the freezer once he gets the iceberg full of old garbage food out of it.
Assuming it’s warmer than freezing where you are, filling the freezer with water is an idea. Another idea is to set it on its side facing the sun, and use your hose to spray water on the iceberg every few minutes . Which will melt the ice faster, at the wastage of some water. best of all, the extra water may lubricate the iceberg to slide out as a unit. It will thaw much fast sitting on your deck exposed on all sides to the air than it will sitting in the highly insulated tub of the freezer body.
However you do it, you’ll need to check on the melting progress every couple of hours, whack off what garbage food you can & pitch that.
As said above, a freezer on its side may never run right again, but if it’s just trash anyhow, that doesn’t matter.
Shoot. I bet people haul full ones to landfills everyday.
I expect a freezer half-plus full of solid water might be kinda heavy to lift into the pickup truck. I’m thinking the only reason to get the ice & garbage food out is to lighten the weight.
Maybe.
It’s according to where you live how you can dispose of it piece meal on your drive.
Neighbors, HOAs, your MIL all might crinkle a nose.
The neighborhood ferals will love you, tho’
BTW, don’t forget to remove the door or secure it shut prior to disposal.
And as for that, I remember in the aftermath of one of the hurricanes, many people had refrigerators that had been unpowered for long enough for the food inside to spoil to the point that the owners wanted to open them, so they just secured them shut and disposed of them that way.