Garage freezer question

[Bigdawg90]

So my wife and I have been re stocking everything and wanted to get a chest freezer. We’ve always stock two fridge/freezers with meat but wanted to get something that can store a whole cow.

For those of you with experience, is 16 cu foot actually big enough to store a whole cow purchase? If so do you have any recommendations for requesting specific cuts to save space? Is there extra space for a deer after deer season? Is GE and higher end freezers worth the extra cost or do you have good experiences with the Home Depot and Lowes brands? I’ve found so many different opinions I wanted to ask actual peepers with experience in the wild temp swings here.

My wife and I have never needed this much freezer storage but our two kids will eat us out of house and home if we don’t start buying in bulk to save money.

Garage is temp controlled but not insanely well. Temp ranges from around 50 degrees to 85 degrees.

 

[SlugSlinger]

I have two 21 cu foot uprights, and a half beef, about 350 - 400 lbs, fills a 21 cu foot. There may be a little extra room, but not much.

 

[JEVapa]

We have 7cuft GE chicom made chest freezer and a 20.2 cu ft Frigidaire upright. Both are working great but the Frigidaire held a whole cow plus deer meat plus all the little extra BS that is bought every month and stuffed into every nook and cranny left over.

The Frigidaire is an Electrolux product and built in the US. I've had it for about four years now and its still going strong in the same environment you are talking about. I think it was well worth the investment and highly recommend. IDK if the 16cu ft would hold a whole cow or not.

 

[OKRuss]

I'd vote for an upright vs chest(just my opinion). 350-400 lbs of meat for a half beef was a big cow/steer. Our last half was 265#. I would think my 21 cu ft would hold close to 500#. So like SlugSlinger stated, won't be any room for much else.

 

[rickm]

Truthfully get the biggest you can afford and have room for cause you will find down the road you dont have enough room. And i feel you can get more in a chest type than a upright but a upright is easier to divide your stuff up and find it easier where a chest type everything will get buried and the racks in them(if you have them) will limit you for space.

 

[turkeyrun]

Worst PoS freezer we ever had was a GE.
Have 2 upright Frigidaire (from Lowes), a 21 and a 27. 2 chest freezers, 12 and 14,
Frigidaire and Kenmore (Maytag).

I will NEVER have another chest. Upright takes up less space and is easier to locate what you want.

With 3 refrigerators, we still need more capacity. Freezers seem to be in short supply.

 

[JEVapa]

Worst PoS freezer we ever had was a GE

I agree and disagree...the chest freezer is still going strong, but we've had a couple GE fridge/freezers that just sh*t the bed. However, the longest lasting fridge we've ever had, which is older than our marriage, is an old school almond colored enamel GE.

As far as the chest freezer goes, I agree. I don't like it much, stuff gets lost in there forever and it takes an hour to dig through everything to find the one and only thing it is you're looking for. It is good for hiding the Fat Boys though.

 

[Bigdawg90]

So my biggest concern with an upright is trying to keep things cold in a power outage. My wife and I have been through a couple outages for up to a couple weeks. We were able to keep things frozen with our generator cycling on and off on our bottom freezer, but our upright fridge/freezer struggled and some of our items spoiled.

I cycle the generator 2 hrs on 4 hrs during the day off and then at night 2 hrs on 6 hrs off. That made our propane last almost two weeks during our last major outage.

Have you guys with upright freezers ever had any problems during an outage?

 

[Jason Freeland]

21 CuFt upright Frigidaire is what I have, but haven't had it long enough to have had to deal with an extended outage. We fit 300#s of cow in it just fine, could probably hold a whole one without any trouble. We'll find out as we are trying for a whole cow next time, not just a half.

 

[jrusling]

We have 3 21 ft uprights and one 7.7 ft chest. The chest is just for more long term storage just until we have room in the uprights. All of them are in a garage. We do have a small wall mount heater to keep the garage above about 40 degrees. Most of the freezers are Frigidaire. Actually one of the uprights is supposed to be a backup in case one fails, but we seem to be able to keep all of them pretty full. The fuller that they are the longer they can go without power. If you have empty space fill it up with milk cartons almost full of water. It is also a good idea to fill up plastic cup 1/2 full of water and let it freeze the put a coin on top of the ice. If the ice melts the coin will not be on the top of the ice.