Plenty of "pretty" all freezer units are offered, but they will all be expensive, frost free, and designed to be integrated into a kitchen rather than stuck in the laundry room. Utility freezers are a different animal all together. They're not designed to be pretty and to go with decor. They are designed to be functional and to be placed in a utility room or garage space. If you want something other than the usual boring white, then paint a mural on the case with artist's acrylics or wrap it in copper or decopauge flowers on it or something. And see if you can't find a black freezer gasket at an appliance parts store to replace the white gasket with.

I replaced my 40 yr old 22' Kelvinator upright with an 18' Whirlpool when we moved. The Kelvinator was working flawlessly still, but moving it would have meant taking off the door and two doors to the house to get it back out of the basement where it had lived its long life and I left it - spotlessly clean and fully functioning - for the new owners. No real complaints about the Whirlpool, but in choosing a smaller more energy efficient model I've cut myself a little short on freezing space, it's really full and I've had to change my storage habits a little. I can wrap foods as well as anyone, did you know if not meticulously wrapped in a frost free freezer your foods will lose quality more quickly? My understanding is that frost free uses approx. 35% more electricity to operate too.... I bought manual defrost for longer term storage. With an assortment of coolers in the hallway to my mudroom for the frozen foods, a small space heater in front of the open door, I can have the freezer defrosted, wiped dry, refilled and running in about 40 minutes. I've defrosted it twice in the 16 months I've had it, not a huge chore to me. In a cooler basement and not as conveniently located (door was not being opened, closed as often), defrosting was only required once a year with old faithful Kelvinator ;)

cynic, Again, I don't have a freezer, therefore my statements are just based on my understanding of how things generally work. Also, I am not saying that a manual freezer is a lousy freezer. I can understand a self-defrost may not be as efficient because it uses a heating system inside to defrost regularly and there is a fan to circulate cold air. Also, I think a manual defrost most likely will need thicker insulation because it can't even out inside temperature as well, while a self-defrost will uses thinner insulation to give you more storage, which is a good selling point. However, some of this lack of efficiency is balanced out when you manually defrost a freezer, because you need a lot of energy to melt the ice and re-cool the entire freezer again and all the food that's been out for an hour or so. thinner insulation can give you around two cubic feet more of storage. "----dcarch, I assume you're saying keep a freezer in a cold garage.------" Actually I am talking about a split system. The condensing coil is installed outside of the house. This system gives you bonus cooling in the winter and will not heat up your house in the summer. The basic mechanics of a refrigeration cycle, just like an air conditioner, it is most efficient when you don't really need it. "----I don't see freezer burn as ever being a good thing!-----" Of course not. What I was trying to say was that a self-defrost freezer uses forced cold air and that can mean faster freezer burn if you don't package your food well; however, it is a good thing because the food get frozen much quicker. The quicker the food gets frozen, the smaller the ice crystals will form inside your food (less cell membrane damage), which may mean better quality food (similar to flash freezing). One of the main advantages of a frost free unit, besides convenience is its ability to keep recommended temperature quickly and evenly throughout the inside. The thermostat typically used in a freezer is of the capillary type. This kind of thermostat will take anywhere from 10 to 20 degrees F from the set temperature to turn the compressor on and off. This deviation from 0 degree F in an unevenly cooled freezer can mean a less than ideal storage environment for food. This condition gets worst when ice is formed on the freezer walls because ice is a relatively good insulator. dcarch

Refrigeration systems have Evaporators, Condensers, Compressors, and a metering device such as a capillary tube, that meters the delivery of the high pressure liquid refrigerant to the low pressure evaporator where the liquid refrigerant starts boiling off/vaporizing. This boiling off is when it absorbs the heat from the refrigerator compartment. When the refrigerant has completely vaporized and had absorbs as much heat as possible it goes to the compressor where it compressed and becomes a High Pressure gas. The high pressure gas moves to the condenser coils where heat is removed and the High Pressure gas condenses to a high pressure liquid which then goes to the metering device to start it's journey all over again. I've added a link to a video that explains the process. How a refrigerator works A self defrosting refrigerator/freezer has a heater under the evaporator coils. This heater is controlled by a timing device. In older more simple refrigerators is was basically a clock that would turn on the heater about every 12 hours and melt any accumulated frost from the evaporator coils and fins. newer refrigerators use sensors to, in a round about way, measure the amount of frost and only turn on the heater when the frost is at a certain level. Self defrosting refrigerator/freezers have a fan that circulates the air through the cabinet and over the evaporator coils. As the evaporator removes the heat it will also collect the moisture from the air and freeze it on the coils which effectively dries the air. When air has a very low moisture content it will draw moisture from unsealed food items which will then again travel through the evaporator leaving that moisture on the coils again. eventually the frost builds up and the defrost heater comes on again to defrost the coils. This water then goes through the evaporator drain and into a reservoir under the refrigerator in the warm machine compartment where it evaporates into the kitchen air.