Richard J Kinch wrote:

... In my experience you go from running constantly while ice is being made
to running quite intermittently when there is no icemaking or exposed ice.
A puddle of liquid water in a freezer is like a campfire in there, pushing
the temp towards 32 deg F when the freezer wants to shut off at 0 deg F.

Then again...

How much energy would we save if we kept ice trays in a baggie?

My ice cube trays hold 0.796 pounds of water. Freezing one from 60 F takes
(60-32+144)0.796 = 137 Btu, ie 0.04 kWh of heat. A fridge with a COP of 3
could move that with 0.013 kWh worth 1.3 cents at 10 cents/kWh. Know anyone
who freezes 1/0.013 = 75 ice cube trays per day? :-)

The trays have about 4"x10" of ice surface. Over a month, they might lose
1/4" of depth in my frost-free freezer. How much does that cost?

That's about 0.25x4x10/12^3x62 = 0.36 pounds of ice, ie 1.7 Btu/day worth
0.002 cents per day (61 cents per year :-) at 10 cents/kWh with a COP of 3.

Polyethylene bags, by the way, are not very effective vapor barriers...

http://www.devicelink.com/mpb/archive/98/09/005.html

says 100 in^2 of "low-density polyethylene" loses about 0.4 grams of water
per day per mil (0.001") of thickness at 40 C (104 F), with 0% RH on one
side and 35% on the other. A graph shows how this decreases linearly with
inverse (1000/T(K)) temperature. How much would that cost?

EERE/DOE say a 6 mil poly film vapor barrier has 0.06 perms, ie 1 ft^2
transmits 0.06 grains of water vapor per hour (out of 7000 grains per pound)
with a 1" Hg differential pressure at 73.4 F. How much would that cost?

Nick