I have a large chest freezer which is mostly empty. If I fill it with ice
(bags or gallon jugs of frozen water) will it use less electricity? It is
about 3 years old.

jfcrn wrote:
I have a large chest freezer which is mostly empty. If I fill it with ice
(bags or gallon jugs of frozen water) will it use less electricity? It is
about 3 years old.

No. And manual-defrost chest freezers tend to be very efficient, using
half as much electricity as modern frostless refrigerator-freezers.
It's possible your freezer costs only $25 a year to run. Consider
filling it with milk when its on sale, taking care to remove at least
1/2 cup per gallon and purging the air to allow the containers to
expand as the water turns to ice.

"jfcrn" wrote in
news:a9d8d69a3d4b49ec8f35085be028719a@homerepairli ve.com:

I have a large chest freezer which is mostly empty. If I fill it with
ice (bags or gallon jugs of frozen water) will it use less
electricity? It is about 3 years old.

Supposedly a full freezer is more efficient than an empty one. I had a
large chest freezer and used bags of ice and soda bottles filled with water
to fill up the space. It seemed to reduce the fluctuations in temp
whenever the lid was opened. It also helped A LOT to keep the temp cold
when the power would go out for hours at a time. I kept mine at -10F.

Dee

Dee wrote:
"jfcrn" wrote in
news:a9d8d69a3d4b49ec8f35085be028719a@homerepairli ve.com:

Supposedly a full freezer is more efficient than an empty one. I had a
large chest freezer and used bags of ice and soda bottles filled with water
to fill up the space. It seemed to reduce the fluctuations in temp
whenever the lid was opened.

Fluctuations in temperature do not necessarily indicate fluctuations in
power consumption. It takes much more energy to change the temperature
of a given volume of water than of ice.

It also helped A LOT to keep the temp cold when the power would
go out for hours at a time. I kept mine at -10F.

The usual recommendation is for 4F, but 0F can give 50-100% better
storage life. I can't imagine how long food will last at -10F, but it
may at least double the energy consumption