How to Defrost a Chest Freezer – Top 2 Methods

You can defrost a chest freezer by following these two methods. You can completely defrost your freezer. This method will work on every type of chest or commercial freezer.

Freezers are an important appliance in any kitchen. Freezers are very useful in not only storing but maintaining fresh and chilled food products as well. However, some daily activities could lead to some types of malfunctioning in the freezer, which could reduce the performance of the freezer. Here, we are going to discuss the ways to defrost a chest freezer.

Contents

What makes Frost to Get Build up in your Chest Freezer

We generally open the freezer, grab the required food item, and shut it regularly. However, in that opened freezer, warm air gets entered into the freezer, which gets condensed and freezes inside it. Subsequently, frost gets build-up, which acquires the freezer’s space and degrades the freezer’s efficiency.

When you find the frost that got build-up is about ¼ inch thick or more, you need to get your chest freezer to defrost at that instance.

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How to Defrost a Chest Freezer

Talking about chest freezers, it includes Commercial Freezer, which is used in the retail industry, and Bench Top Freezer. The case of defrosting occurs more often in Commercial Freezer as the people are very much engaged in serving the customers in their retail shop, and at that moment, they could mistakenly keep the freezer door open, and frosting happens.

The new chest freezer that is available in the market comes with a self-defrost option. However, if you owe a chest freezer of older models, there is an easy and convenient methods to defrost a chest freezer for that too.

  • With using defrost drainer
  • Manual defrosting

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Method 1. Defrost Drainer

The self-defrost option available in the new chest freezers allows defrosting automatically. It circulates air and deposits some moisture to the cooling coil, which helps to warm systematically for melting the ice. This melted ice gets collected into the defrost drainer so that it can be removed with ease.

  1. All you need is to turn off the low-temperature alarm of the freezer first.
  2. Get the drain plug that is outside the freezer and remove it by twisting and pulling the plug.
  3. Now, insert the adaptor of the drain hose into the drain.
  4. Connect the drain hose with the adaptor. The water flows into the defrost drain or pan from the drain hose’s other end.
  5. Take off the drain plug, which is inside the freezer.
  6. Replace the drain plugs which are inside and outside the freezer after water is drained. Ensure to turn on the low-temperature alarm back.

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Method 2. Manual Defrosting

Though this method takes a while and involves arduous efforts, you can still simply defrost your chest freezer. This step is ideally beneficial to those whose freezers don’t come with the self-defrost mode.

  1. To do so, you are required to unplug the freezer first and remove all the food items stored in it to a cool place to prevent defrosting of these items.
  2. Now, you have to wait for about 15 minutes until the ice softens to scrap it out easily. You can even place a hot water pot inside the freezer to fasten the melting of the ice.
  3. Once the ice gets soften, scrape the ice using the spatula or a wooden spoon from the freezer’s walls.
  4. Make sure to remove the chunks of the scraped ice out of the freezer before it melts.

After you have removed all the frost from the freezer, transfer the food items to the freezer and plug it back. You have to be cautious while scrapping out the ice. It is not recommended to use a knife or a sharp tool to remove the frost from the freezer’s walls as it could damage the freezer line, and more importantly, it could hurt you severely.

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Conclusion

Building frost in your chest freezer could set many drawbacks for you. It could even burden your pocket as it increases the energy costs by consuming too much power supply. But, to sort out this cumbersome for you, we have properly guided what you should do in such a case.

We have highlighted the methods to defrost a chest freezer. It is advised to perform defrosting of your chest freezer once or twice a year to ensure the efficient functioning of the freezer.