Using Upright Freezers Efficiently

Knowing how to use upright freezers properly will make them even more useful and efficient than they already are. Upright freezers are designed to be energy efficient, and you can check the EER, or Energy Efficiency Ratings to see how well the upright freezers you are looking at rate. The better the Energy Efficiency Rating, the less energy that will be used to run the upright freezers. This is a function of manufacturing, but there are a number of things that you can do to make upright freezers even more efficient. If you will rotate your food items properly, use the right kinds of containers and keep them filled to the right levels, upright freezers will work better for you.
Everyone knows how important it is to rotate food storage so that the older items are used first. This is especially important with the foods you have stored in upright freezers. Freezing food will allow it to stay good for at least six weeks, and can even extend it to months for certain items. The same foods would spoil within days or at least weeks in a refrigerator. The best way to know which foods in the upright freezers need to be used first is to accurately mark them as you place them in the shelves. Many people like to work from top to bottom or bottom to top, moving foods up to higher shelves in the upright freezers as they get older and putting newly frozen items on the lower shelves of the upright freezers. The government puts out a chart that can be found on the internet that gives guidelines for frozen foods.
Just as important as rotating your food is the kind of containers that you are placing in the upright freezers. Many products are on the market to help consumers keep their foods fresher in the upright freezers. There are thick plastic bags with zipping locks, tempered glass containers with lids, plastic containers with extra tight lids to prevent problems with expansion during the freezing process, and even freezer paper and foil that can be used to keep frozen foods fresher. Always use freezer-safe containers so that you don’t run into problems. For instance if you put regular glass containers in upright freezers they could shatter, which would create quite a mess. Tempered glass, on the other hand, is designed to withstand the colder temperatures. It is also a good rule to remember not to freeze liquids in quantities larger than half a gallon per container. More liquid than that will take too long to freeze all the way through and may have a tendency to spoil.
Since upright freezers actually remove heat from the interior rather that adding cold air, they work more efficiently if they are on the full side. The guideline is to keep upright freezers about 2/3 full in order for the temperature to be maintained more easily. However, you also don’t want to stuff upright freezers so full that there is not enough airflow around the foods. Once you determine what your needs are, you can look for upright freezers that will work for you.