Speaking of fridges

Huzzah! (...or whatever it is that Dry Ice Salesmen use to exult...)

[Jenise]

The dying/dead freezer was at 30F yesterday afternoon and it still had power/light, so I thought maybe it was still working and only the fridge side was dead which doesn't really make sense since they share all mechanical systems (my new one, like a Sub Zero, will have dual/independent systems. But this morning it was at 36F so apparently just slower in warming up.

Current status: the frozen ice things I made out of plastic water bottles are on the bottom of my neighbor's large cooler, all the outside fridge stuff is in there topped with two 5 lb blocks of dry ice, and half the the stuff in the inside freezer is in the outside freezer re-freezing. The other half is in the trash as are almost anything that was vegetable. Apparently over the years good neighbors have given me a lot of frozen fish, and I don't care for frozen fish.

Thanks for your inputs--without the one-two punch of your comments I wouldn't have remembered that dry ice is available.

Dry ice is great stuff, but be careful. Make sure the room is well ventilated when you open the coolers (dry ice evaporates as CO2)

[Jenise]

Dry ice is great stuff, but be careful. Make sure the room is well ventilated when you open the coolers (dry ice evaporates as CO2)

Thanks for the warning. All the dry ice is in the garage, not inside; I'm still using ice inside.

[Jenise]

Well, it's done!!! When they quoted me $599 for installation I thought I was being gouged, but having no choice--well, okay. After yesterday? Two men, meticulous and thorough, worked continuously--no breaks, no re-do's--for almost five hours assisted by two more who came from 50 miles south to help with the load-in. The old fridge weighed about 600 lbs, the new one weighs almost 1,000. $599? And from a trusted local independent appliance dealer who has been in business here for like 50 years and stands behind their work? I wan't gouged, this was a bargain!

By bed time last night I'd unloaded the garage freezer into the new freezer and unloaded the borrowed cooler stuff into the garage freezer. All this took a zillion trips back and forth, one basket at a time.

This morning there's new ice in the ice tray but so far, no craft ice. Those are slow to make--about four or five a day, I was told. I might make negronis tonight for a friend to celebrate their arrival.

Whew! Good to know that You made it through with minimal food loss.

[Jenise]

Yes, minimal. Most of what I threw out (and I tossed a lot) really needed to go anyway, like chiles I roasted in 2019. I'd say I only lost about $100 worth of recent purchases--things like frozen dumplings and vegetables that were on the upper shelves of the failed Kitchen Aid freezer and did not have the substance to resist thawing.

Some thoughts on side by side vs. French door: the old side by side held much more than the new French door one. The four drawers which are outwardly equal in size are not, and the bottom two are disarmingly pretty shallow. When I saw it on the showroom floor I'm sure I didn't even open the lower ones. They are not nearly as stuffable as the layers created in the side-by-side nor as forgiving of odd shapes, like a leg of lamb. If you build up too far, the drawer won't shut. In short: everything that came out of the old freezer would not fit in the new one.

That said, I need to buy/freeze less anyway so this won't ultimately be a problem as long as I have Lady Kenmore chugging away in the garage as backup, but if this fridge needed to hold enough for a family of six it would be a let-down.

Every day I say a little thank you for our Frigidaire (I think they were made by Kenmore at the time). Top freezer, 25-ish cu. ft. (700L). We've replaced the icemaker two or three times, and had some painful issues when the drain froze that have been permanently fixed with some judicious copper wire. But it is still (knock on wood) plugging along at 25 years of age. What's really amazing to me is that's like a fridge from 1976, back when we bought the house. The stove was about 20 years old, and has had a couple repairs, and currently needs another one. But it's now just about 50!

Glad you are out of the early 20th century and back to the era of mechanical refrigeration, Jenise!

The old fridge weighed about 600 lbs, the new one weighs almost 1,000.

Half a ton! Are you planning to make a suckling elephant?

Well heck, at least it wasn't a software update that knocked out your fridge!

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/09/owners-mourn-spoiled-food-after-firmware-update-bricks-samsung-smart-fridges/