By way of explanation: I live in an apartment, so the freezer I use is not mine. It's a stacked freezer/fridge, just about as bog standard as you would anticipate seeing in any home.
Recently I've been thinking that it sounds like it's struggling often. Sometimes it feels like ice cream inside the freezer is a little soft (though that could just be that certain brands of ice cream are softer than others?)
About a week ago, I got home from a weekend vacation and was dead tired. I pulled out some frozen chicken yakisoba for dinner, and several hours later got the worst food poisoning of my life (I should note that the doctor did diagnose it as food poisoning, and specifically blamed something I ate). The people I had been on vacation with didn't suffer any illness, and the last day I hardly ate anything other than breakfast before the yakisoba - so I became even MORE suspicious of the freezer at this time.
I recently purchased a temperature probe and placed it in my freezer. It's only been going about 24 h, so I'm not finished collecting data, but I see the internal temperature of the freezer fluctuating between 2.0 and -6.8 °F. Is this a safe temperature range for a freezer? I've read that keeping it below 0 is ideal, and I'm seeing cycles of 15-20 minutes where it's between 0 and 2 °F. I'm not sure if that's enough, over a longer period, to cause a problem.
I realize this is a bit foolish of me, but I don't want to approach my landlord about replacing the freezer until I'm very sure that there is, in fact, something wrong with it. I just have no idea how to either verify the freezer is safe, or prove that it is malfunctioning.
Thanks in advance for any help.
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I'd also maybe look into the possibility that yakisoba was bad even before you chucked it into the freezer.
I can has cheezburger, yes?
If your fridge has gaps in the sealing, you'll start getting moisture buildup (unless you live in a super dry location) that will start ice to form on the insides. If you have moisture freezing to the side of your freezer, you have a seal problem. If ice remains as ice in your fridge, its plenty cold enough to keep food preserved. That doesn't mean you want to freeze things forever, though.
If you have a coolant leak, which is what would likely cause your fridge to warm up, its going to be a significant and rapid thing. Like overnight your fridge goes from cold to room temperature or (likely) hotter as the condenser produces heat. It doesn't happen slowly, if coolant can escape, it will, and pretty quickly with how old fridges work.
I don't really think you can have a gradual failure of a freezer without noticeable seal break signs. And that sort of failure has nothing to do with the sound it makes.
It seems to peek out above 0 °F for about 20 min at a time, cresting in the range of about 2 °F before going back down.
I'm entertaining the idea for sure. I'll admit, it was ready-made, prepackaged yakisoba. It came with two sleeves of yakisoba, one of which I consumed on a Thursday afternoon without issue. I left the other one in the freezer over the weekend, then ate it on Monday night, and that's when the bad stuff happened. I can't rule out that it was bad before it was packaged and frozen, though, even if the other sleeve was okay.
Usually no more than a week. Most realistically about five or six days, but up to ten days or more in some instances. I'll also do some meal-prep on occasion, making a huge meal on a Sunday, and then placing the leftovers into containers that I freeze, forget about for months, and then throw out because I'm a dummy. Honestly, I don't eat much that's been in the freezer for more than 10-12 days at most.
Thanks much, this is good to know! I've been hearing some odd knocking/rattling sounds, but I'm not seeing anything like standing water or ice build up inside the freezer. And if it's a sudden and really noticeable thing when freezers fail, then I suppose I'm likely getting worked up about nothing.
I will say that on occasion I will find that the cardboard boxes of frozen meals feel 'damp', for lack of a better term? And sometimes I will feel like the outside of a bag of frozen vegetables is more wet than icy. But from what I've seen of the temperature monitoring, I'm not sure what that could be.
I can has cheezburger, yes?
Generally:
Since our food doesn't usually have psychrophiles, 2f should still be okay in that time period, assuming it doesn't go higher and doesn't stay at 2f for long periods of time.
My wife got it from a fast food coke before. So while you may not have eaten anything, if you got a drink, and the cup was funky, or they didn't clean the soda lines recently, or the fast food person didn't wash their hands, or the ice was contaminated (ice contamination is a way a lot of people get food poisoning). That can definitely be a vector.
It can also vary based on gut flora.
If the bacteria in your gut differ from everyone else that was eating and you got the strain of e. coli or salmonella that they weren't sensitive too, you'll get sick and they won't.
Moreover, 'food poisoning' is a general term that includes a large number of actual specific organisms (whether bacteria, virus, etc), that have a large range of times from ingestion to onset of symptoms - like from a few hours to days later
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/food-poisoning/symptoms-causes/syc-20356230
Typically nothing coming out of the freezer should feel wet, damp, etc. Dumb question here, but are you dead certain that your temp isn't reporting 0-2C?
2F should be pretty hard frozen, no water or dampness anywhere in the freezer. That's 30 degrees below freezing. 2C is quite not-good for a freezer.
At this stage, I'm going to talk with my landlord to check in about getting this replaced. It looks like this might be happening once a week or so. And it's pretty unsettling.
Not a dumb question at all, because I've been worried about that too. I'm used to operating in °C, but all of the measurements I've been taking have been in °F for certain. It's what I've found on the regulatory pages and such that have been talking about safe temperatures, so I just wanted to align with that. So yes, all temps are in °F, even though °F is backwards buffoonery.
I can has cheezburger, yes?
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Basically, my probes were reporting this kind of behavior several times a day. Each 'spike' was lasting roughly an hour at temperature I would consider unsafe for a freezer - or at least detrimental:
Fortunately, that was enough for the landlord. He's ordering a new refrigerator/freezer this week and will be replacing the old one. Thanks to everyone for your help and advice!