Before choosing a freezer for your home, you should make sure that you really need this unit.

Who really needs a freezer?

• To gardeners and truck farmers. Frozen fruits of their labor will save much more vitamins than cooked in compote or in jam.
• Lovers of "quiet hunting". Freezing mushrooms is much faster than canning in other ways. And safer: no botulism.
• Fishermen and hunters. And how else to save tens of kilograms of caught fish, half the carcass of a boar or a deer?
• To the owners of pets. It is much more profitable to buy a batch of meat products once at a wholesale price, than buying every kilogram in a supermarket every time.

If you belong to one of these categories, or are just accustomed to having food stocks at hand, it's time to figure out how to choose a freezer.

Vertical or horizontal?

According to the layout, freezers can be similar in appearance to refrigerators. This type is called freezing cabinets. For products, there may be shelves, as in the refrigerator, or more commonly found drawers. A vertical freezer can have from 1 to 8 compartments.

There are freezers with two compressors, which allows maintaining different temperature regimes in different compartments.

Freezers with two compressors consume more electricity, but the products in them are kept better. They are also more durable: each of the compressors works with less load and wears out more slowly. However, such cases are more expensive. Before choosing a freezer with one or two compressors, it is worth correctly calculating the benefits of one or another option.

More economical in operation are freezers of horizontal layout. Their main advantage is that the interior space is used more efficiently: more products are placed in the cask, less energy is used for freezing and storage.

This is due to the more functional arrangement of the elements of the cooling system. Inside there are hanging baskets with dividers, in which the frozen products are placed. Usually vertical freezers buy into city apartments, but a large horizontal chest can be chosen for installation in the country.

Dimensions

Most vertical freezers have a standard width and depth of 60 × 60 cm, and the height can be different, from 85 to 210 cm. Many manufacturers of household appliances produce freezers and refrigerators, which can be variously arranged: set side-by-side side by side, or place them one on the other.

Freezing chests are unchanged in size: their height is 85 cm.

Other parameters may vary. The minimum internal volume of the chest is 100 liters, the maximum - up to 500 liters.

Specifications

As with refrigerators, the class of the freezer depends on the level of the temperature maintained and the power consumed on it. The asterisks on the marking indicate the storage temperature. The more stars - the lower the temperature in your home glacier and the longer the products will remain without loss of quality. The weakest class A * - in it the temperature does not happen below -6 ° C, the products are well kept for only a few days. Class A **** implies the possibility of freezing the products at a temperature of -24 ° C. You can store supplies in such a freezer for a year.

The important aspect is the way to defrost. The easiest way is manual defrosting: 1-2 times a year you turn off the unit, take out all the products from it, wait for it to melt. Then wash, disinfect, wipe dry, and you can put everything back and turn on the freezer until the next annual defrost.

Much more convenient is the No-Frost system, which is also used in refrigerators. This system does not allow the formation of a layer of ice inside the device. From time to time it includes a small heater, the years that have been melted, and water flows down into a special evaporator tray. But even with the No-Frost system once a year, the freezer is required to be washed and disinfected.

It is useful to know the climatic class of the freezer. The energy consumption will be less if you select the device in accordance with the climatic zone of your residence.

What type of management is preferred, electronic or mechanical? A more modern electronic method of control is more convenient, there are no disputes. But it breaks more often. The mechanical control system is still more reliable.

Additional Features

You act quite right, deciding to choose a model with the function of quick freezing. To include in this mode the freezer it is necessary for some hours prior to the beginning of a frost. The temperature inside will go down to a maximum, and everything you put inside will freeze as quickly as possible. At the same time, the temperature will not rise in that which has already been frozen.

An important function is the preservation of low temperatures in conditions of power failure. Good chambers are equipped with special refrigerant plates. Inside them is a liquid that freezes at low temperatures and slowly warms up. When the supply of electricity ceases, the plates begin to slowly thaw, giving cold to the surrounding products. In a chamber with good thermal insulation, the cold persists for up to 2 days.

Blocking the switching of modes from children. This function is necessary for those whose children have a habit of pressing all the buttons to which it is possible to reach and twist all the handles that spin. You can lock the control so that even an ingenious kid does not spoil anything.

With all other equal characteristics, it is worth choosing the model in which the drawers are equipped with position locks "pushed out halfway."