I have a 5 cubic foot chest freezer, it is 12 years old, and I keep it in the garage. In early Fall, I defrosted, it, cleaned it, and threw away some old food. I also started eating some game left from last year, and gave some away. I shot a doe early in the season. One day I went to grab some steaks, and it was 55 degrees in the freezer! WTF! What happened? The power light was on. Nothing I could do. The meat was ruined. I buried all of it. I felt sick to my stomach. Time for a new freezer. But, oops, where to get one? Covid has cleared out the freezers. Off to youtube, to see what may have caused this. I did some tests, and determined that my switch/thermostat had gone out. I bought a new one on Amazon, and the freezer works fine. I also bought a freezer alarm, it has a remote sending unit (for inside the freezer) and a alarm that I keep in the house. The alarm was under 25 dollars, well worth it. I have owned several freezers, never had an issue. I used to set it and forget it. Not anymore. I hope this helps someone.

Its an awful feeling. I had something trip a GFI outlet last summer and had the same thing happen. I had some great stuff in there and lost everything. First thing I did was buy an alarm for each of my freezers. Never again.

Same problem happened to our freezer in August. I lost some deer burger and sausage from last season. The wife lost more stuff. We went to Lowe’s for a new freezer, none to be found. Called repair guy $250 later it was a defroster switch. Lesson learned!

My hunting partner had a similar issue. He purchased a new house, and now had his older freezer in the garage. Went to get some meat out, and it was off and everything from last year was spoiled, and freezer reeked!! UGH. He is not very mechanically minded and called me; I had him check and it was plugged into a GFCI protected circuit. The starting current was enough of a mis-match that it tripped, causing loss of power. I had hime get his electrician buddy to put a regular breaker in, and he got an new alarm when he got the NEW freezer!! Always have some type of indication for when it's off, could be an alarm, or something as simple as a night light

I hate those GFI outlets for this very reason.

It was in the 90s I lost about half an elk to a freezer in the garage that was on a GFI circuit. I have not had a freezer or fridge on a GFI since then

Fridges any freezers should never be on GFI outlets. Many outlets in garages are on a GFI circuit by code so don’t assume if there isn’t a reset on the outlet it’s not gfi. Just push the test on the GFI then see what has power and what doesn’t.

Talking with my electrician on a new build. He has to install a GFCI by code. He told me to switch it out once i move in.

GFCIs will trip when you have a bad storm even when there really wasn't a ground fault. The GFCI circuit breakers in the load center are even worse. The power for a refrigerator or freezer needs to be a dedicated circuit without a GFCI. I like to do the quarter trick in my freezers. Get a whiskey glass, fill it with water, and leave it in the freezer. Once it's frozen put a quarter on top of the ice. If your freezer ever defrost you will find the quarter in the bottom of the glass even if things managed to refreeze.

Ours went out a couple of years ago. Fortunately, we caught it before the meat thawed, and a friend manages the cafeteria at a local Christian school. He offered their walk-in freezer to us until we got another one. Saved our bacon and all our venison!

Get you an external over/under temp. Alarm on Amazon, about $10.00. I run one on each of our freezers have it set to -5 for the low and 20 degrees for the high. Almost lost a freezer full of elk, hog and fish.
Always change out the GFI outlet before plugging in a freezer.
Sorry for the lose of your game meat.

Had GFCI do the same thing to us in the garage. Luckily I noticed our security cameras (which are on the same circuit) went out and saved myself from disaster. Sorry you lost that meat, definitely unfortunate.

I’m not sure about that. Ice will evaporate the same as water, even in a freezer.

https://www.amazon.com/ETHMEAS-Digital-Refrigerator-Thermometer-Function/dp/B076M71GXR/ref=sr_1_25?crid=1SLLPUIL8357S&dchild=1&keywords=freezer+alarm&qid=1610553039&sprefix=Freezer+al%2Caps%2C299&sr=8-25

Saved us from the freezer lose.

We had a GFCI trip on our freezer in the garage. Full of elk, buffalo and beef. We were gone for two weeks on vacation and it must have happened right after we left, this was mid summer. As soon as we walked in the house the smell it us. Searched everywhere for a dead animal somewhere until I opened the door to the garage and immediately started dry heaving. I must have puked a dozen times cleaning out that mess and getting rid of the freezer. Luckily it was only one of three and the other two were fine. Just the thought of that smell is making my stomach turn.

Been there. Luckily mine was still cold and some even frozen so I fired up the grill and cooked most of it up and refroze it. made great dog treats.

This is a good reminder. I have two freezers in my laundry/utility room - both with alarms that trip at 10F after I learned that hard lesson years ago!

Suggestion for anyone dealing with cleaning one out: Smear Vicks Vaporub all over the outside of a mask. It REALLY helps.

Marc

Played that game with a frozen turkey in our garage fridge that accidently got unplugged. A week later I discovered the bird had exploded in the summer heat inside the freezer. I can't un-remember that smell. Makes a gut shot deer smell pleasant.

Having bear baited for years with old rotten sheep, I can tell you that gasoline on your upper lip will get you thru the smell!!!

Try it before you poo poo the idea. Been doing it for decades.

Lost almost two processed deer about half was in sausage. Young teenage girls, one left the door open in the garage freezer over a weekend. Never seen anything like it. She didn’t think it was a big deal. But then again she has no idea what a loaf of bread cost.

This is correct

Every circuit in a house must be protected by either a GFCI outlet or breaker, or an arc fault breaker....even those dedicated circuits to single receptacles for refrigerators, microwaves, freezers, etc.

I've been an electrician for right at 30 years and let's just say as soon as the inspector left my house we built 6 years ago on the final inspection, the arc fault breakers serving my dedicated circuits to the appliances mentioned above were replaced with standard breakers!

One of the posters above stated the in-rush of current will trip an GFCI. If this is happening it is one of two things causing it. Either the appliance has a issue or the GFCI does. GFCIs do not read or react to inrush. They read unbalanced current between the ungrounded (hot) conductor and the grounded (neutral) conductor and will trip at typically 5ma.
Arc Fault CBs on the other hand are a complete other pain in the azz! lol

One of my big chest freezers went out about 2 years ago in the summer time. It was located in an old garage that we didn't frequent daily and sometimes went a week or more without going in it unless we needed something. Lets just say the smell got bad enough you didn't have to be too close that building to know there was something wrong! OMG it was horrible. It probably had 400 lbs of different meats in it and I'll promise you that once I got it all dug out and taken to the back of our place and dumped, there was a 'soup' at the bottom of it that was probably 15 gallons worth that made the nasty meat I'd just dumped seem like heaven!

I forgot to add a feature of my freezer alarm. It also shows the high/low temperature. So, if I was out of town, the power went out, and the freezer reached an unsafe temperature, I would know. I have seen the comments regarding GFIC breakers/outlets. These are required by the NEC code for a garage outlet. A freezer, by itself, should not trip one. These outlets do not last as long as regular outlets, and should be tested for proper functioning. If one is tripping, I suggest finding out why. Depending what else is on the circuit, it may not be the freezer. There is also an issue with the homeowners insurance, if a fire is started because of the code not being followed. I think at one time, the NEC code allowed a non-GFIC dedicated appliance outlet in a garage, not now. I kind of ran on on this, but really suggest the freezer alarm route.

Reading this thread has got me ready to buy one of these alarms. I've had this happen before, luckily it was very early on and cold outside, so I didn't lose much.

Does anyone have a Wi-Fi unit that they'd recommend? I have a detached garage where my deep freeze is located. Unless I'm in the garage, I wouldn't hear the alarm. So I need one with a base that I can bring in the house.

Just ordered up a freezer alarm been meaning to do so. Thanks for the post.

I was looking at those Wifi units, an alarm doesn't do much good if no one is home, i.e. vacation.

OK, but it certainly helps when you are not on vacation.

Gringo Bling, the unit I purchased has a sensor that goes in the freezer, there is the actual alarm that goes in the house, so it is wireless. I don't know what the range is. If you look online for one to buy, I think you could find the info you need. I don't know anything about the ones connected to Wi-Fi.

To make sure I get the alerts when I need them, I researched WiFi options. With WiFI, even if nobody is home or on vacation, I can always get a friend or neighbor to use the keypad on my garage to access my freezer if necessary. I ended up going with the Ubibot WS1 WiFi Temperature Humidity Monitor. I don't know if I need it or not, but I also went ahead and ordered a temperature probe. Total for both is ~$100. If I don't need the probe, the monitor is ~$85.

Yeah, Ive been burnt by the old trusty GFCI a couple times. Lots of options for alarms but only seen one mentioned here. Any others that have served you well?

I have a freezer that I inherited from my aunt almost 20 years ago. It's a smaller upright Amana that she had bought at an unclaimed freight place in Dallas in 1952 and is still working perfectly. The only thing that has ever been done to it, was I had to replace the seal on it about 12 years ago.

Still works just great until the GFI kicks it off. After the third time it happened and I lost about 300lbs of red deer meat, I now plug it into the same circuit that my garage door openers are on. Problem solved!!!

When we bought our house, we purchased an upright deep freeze a couple months later. The weekend before buying the freezer I installed a new 20 amp breaker, ran romex through the attic and down the wall, installed a junction box and a single outlet. Best thing a person can do is have a dedicated line for the meat freezer!
I also have an alarm for it just in case.

Wise words, sir.

I've had a couple of close calls over the years and lost some meat, but never the whole freezer worth. Thanks to this thread I now have alarms on both of mine

I bought a new freezer at Lowes a couple weeks back. They had several in stock.

JR

What size and price? I havent priced in a long time and probably need one.

I have a 40+ year old Amana chest freezer in the garage.

Crossing my fingers.

Ask your electrician if he can add a couple of plugs up high on the walls in your garage. Code may be different or changed, but I was able to do this several years back on our build. Standard plugs and height in our garage on GFI but have one on each wall about 7 feet up that are not on GFI for this very reason.

In addition, the plug your garage door opener is on in the ceiling are not GFI (at least used to not be)

So which alarms do y’all recommend? I saw one of you posted a link to Amazon - mixed reviews about the audio level of the alarm. Wanting to get one ASAP. Been through the big loss twice. Both were human error, and not mine.

Time to get this done right once and for all!

Guess I will be looking into alarms also. Id rather bury the whole freezer or throw it out before I tried to clean out that nasty smelling stuff

the alarm unit is a good investment