How long depends on the freezer. I've had freezers that would stay frozen for nearly 48 hours and others that thawed overnight. In my area most people freeze a small open container of water, like a cup, and leave a coin on top of the ice before they evacuate. If you come back and the coin is frozen beneath the surface of the ice, you know the freezer has thawed and refrozen.

Can't help you with the insurance question--around here asking your agent about that would fast-track you for the uninsurables pool. Besides we mostly have ginormous deductibles so even a commercial-sized freezer full of prime beef and lobster wouldn't meet the deductible.

The most important thing is not to open it, and keep sun and heating off of it.

And to keep it full to the gills. I cram mine with refilled used plastic water bottles. It makes ice to keep it cold, you can use for ice chests and for emergency water supply if needed. You can remove a couple and put in a refer or ice chest during a power outage and keep things cold.

Insurance? it would depend on your deductible. I've heard it's really unwise to make small claims because your ins company can cancel you and it's nearly impossible to reinsure if that happens. It's better to have a high deductible and use your insurance for catastrophic claims.

and if it gets down to ya gotta use, you can always put some frozen goods in the washing machine for easier cleanup later ... plus the metal helps contain the cool slightly

Love the coin trick! I’ve got a freezer in the garage that I don’t trust, and I recently threw away a good bunch of meat simply “on suspicion,” had no way of knowing.

In general:for all areas:

1. Best is to have a generator, which will keep your food safe, heating system operating, and internet/PC working. Depends on the setup, cost is from $200 to over a thousand $ for a fully automatic system.

2. Go to HD and buy a couple sheets of 1" thick rigid foam insulation cut and surround your refrigerator. Your freezer will stage colder two to three times longer.

3. Frozen water bottles are good, but not that good. If you calculate the BTUs in frozen water (latent heat), it's not much. Thermal gel pack is much better.

4. It's OK to open the freezer or refrigerator once in a while. If you check the heat loss (air specific heat) for a cubic foot of air per degree, it is insignificant.

5. Your electric clock (not digital clock) can tell you exactly how long your power has been out.

6. Check food temperature with thermometer in freezer, if they are thawed but still cold within safe temperature, you can cook them all instead of throwing them out.

dcarch

Another option for the 'coin on ice' trick is to just put some ice cubes in a lidded deli container or in a zip-lock bag. A small pool of water in the bottom with some ice still in some cube form will hint at an unknown amount of time the power was off, then refrozen with power back on.

A standard kitchen freezer will have hints in various foods that have thawed and refrozen. For example fruits like blueberries and garden cherry tomatoes turn to mush when thawed. Refrozen would be a clump.

The amount of time a chest or upright freezer will keep things frozen depends on the prep done ahead and the insulation quality of the appliance.

A bit confusing. Is the restocked meat at the summer home? Is it correct to guess you will visit this home off season once the waters recede to check on things?

I would plan ahead for the future and get a digital thermometer that records high/low temps. Works for fridge or freezer. It will record how high the freezer temp became before the power came back on. Holds that temp until reset. Below 40 is considered safe for a refreeze. Also works as just a daily temp check. Most often used for fridge freezer issues that seem to have swaying temp fluctuations.

Keep your freezer full. Bottled water, bags of ice. As many gallons/half gallons that will fill the empty spaces. I just remove a gallon if I need the space and sit in on the floor beside. (drinking water). If present during an outage, A frozen gallon can be moved to the fridge. A bag of ice can be used in a cooler day two or when the temp shows too high. A blanket or newspaper in your freezer can help insulate the frozen food below. On top of that insulation with a frozen gallon, that space can become your fridge for cheeses and such. (monitor with a thermometer). Day 3-4 choose your meals wisely. We made soup first using up veg. Expensive prime cuts we kept in a cooler on ice. Whole chicken/larger cuts took longer to thaw.

We have kept food frozen solid for 3-4days with proper prep. Up to 10-12 still safe.

Your utilities may have a record of power outage times. We get texts from ours. A smaller community may not have that. Before the texting, a neighbor world lets know.

My storm prep list is long obviously. We have always had a generator. But now have a transfer switch.

We have kept food frozen solid for 3-4days with proper prep. Up to 10-12 still safe.

But that's in winter, right? Ambient temperature also plays a role. I'd never risk that long in FL after a hurricane when there's no A/C, for instance, but I can see where it could work very well in a northern basement or garage in the winter.

Never open a freezer or fridge during a power outage! A full freezer without power should hold 3 days or more if not opened. Even if things start to defrost, but not fully, you can keep the items. As a personal note, we had a major flood in the basement, 3 feet high. To our shock, there was no water in the freezer. Power was back in 2 days and freezer and meats were good. My back from all the clean up of muddy waters was not.

If you invest in a whole house generator, be sure it is on high ground. It will not work in flood waters.

Sub Zero freezer and we had a power outage for 3 days. The ice didn't even melt in the freezer! The seal and build on a SZ is amazing, worth every penny!

As others have said, it will stay frozen longer than one might think. In the past (pre-generator days), we went to a company that sold dry ice and put some in our freezer. It works VERY well.

No, it was not winter unfortunately. But a chilly Fall. 45-55 maybe.? Not a storm I like to think about. Definitely prepped us for StormSandy.

Ambient temps do play a role but above was just a quickie. Just trying to trouble-shoot nancyjane's issue and concerns. (The OP.) All climates suffer storms and I absolutely hate them. A co-worker lost power Sunday night? And was without power two days. A neighboring town but we survived it. Wicked wind. Lots of trees down.

Below freezing is super for food storage. Box it up covered with snow and set it outside. Worse is without inside heat, pipes burst.

Prepping your freezer in any climate will buy you a ton of time. If local storm relief provides bags of ice and you have a couple coolers, you can go much longer once frozen food starts to thaw. Days before Sandy I plugged in a small commercial freezer we rarely use and stuffed it with 8 bags of ice. Filled all cars with fuel. After Sandy we installed the transfer switch that runs all power to appliances now. And the fan for the gas heat. Gas stove top worked with a match. Wood fireplace was a weak heat source.

My elderly neighbor installed a whole house generator at great cost. After purchase it needs a concrete pad, then yearly service for maintenance, then it failed year two.

and remember that just because it may be thawed, if ti's still in the safe zone, colder than 40 degrees it's safe to eat.....even to refreeze...quality will be co,promised but it won't make you sick....depending on how long at 40 degrees....but I would assume that if your food was 40 degrees it was never warmer.

sleevendog No the re-stocked meat isn't in our summer cabin. The question was kind of two-fold, asking for our tenants and for ourselves here high and dry just in case of power outages.

Thanks everyone for your responses! Great ideas! My freezer is really full right now and I usually do the milk jugs when it gets roomy.

I did have one power outage that lasted for 5 days in May, many years ago. I started canning beef on day 3, because I had an old gas stove that I could light with a match and city water, but no heat or electricity.

When I explored making a claim with my insurance company it turned out I had a $500 deductible, and so would be making a claim and risking premium increases for just a couple hundred dollars. I decided to just can the beef and anything else I could.

If we had a power outage right now, I could keep everything frozen outside, but in a couple of months that wouldn't work. I do have some good camping coolers that will keep ice without melting for 3 or 4 days, so that would also buy me some time if I needed it.

I do have a generator and know how to use it, LOL. Elery would like to have a permanently wired one and so that might happen in a year or two.

Annie

Depends on the freezer, the location of the freezer (temperatures surrounding) and on how full it is.

2011, I lost power for lengthy periods twice (Hurricane Irene (August), and later on, "Snowmaggeddeon" (Oct/Nov). Both times we had warning, so I did add water bottles to one freezer to make sure it was full in advance.

I had two freezers, an upright in the basement and the one above the fridge in the kitchen.

They say 36 hours for a freezer, and that was true for the kitchen one -- I did grill a bunch of stuff both events. The second, almost winter, outage I had more leeway as I put a bunch of stuff into a regular cooler outside my back door (weighing the lid down so critters couldn't attack it). Also, the fridge freezer, since the house was at about 40 F during the Snowmaggeddon one, survived for about 56 hours.

The upright freezer, a better freezer, lasted about 48-56 hours during Irene and longer during the Halloween/winter event. I did have to throw out foods from the top shelf, and some from the fridge freezer - the top shelf will melt faster than below.

I also did salvage some foods because I had access to dry ice for some of it. Picked up a large cooler and tossed things in that, with the dry ice. Not everything fit, though (and I think that was the last cooler at that store).

The Snowmaggedon outage lasted 8 days, so the power company, CL&P, in Connecticut, gave me a discount or subsidy. I didn't get that for Irene, 5.5 days.

I didn't put in an insurance claim. I did lose some stuff but even if I'd lost it all, I don't think I would have bothered with the hassle. Even with the CSA beef and pork in there.

Someone did mention that if the temp in the freezer remains below 40 F, you can re-freeze safely. I do keep a thermometer in them to check that. I did refreeze some things, but ground meat and fish... eh... couldn't do it.

ALSO don't open the freezer until you really think you have to! Since I did get the dry ice, I did my triage a day before it was essential to try and salvage by grilling.

PS: the cats were super friendly during Snowmageddeon. They curled up with me in my sleeping bag under a ton of blankets!

I am getting a whole house generator this spring here in MA.

So many storms. Endless. Irene destroyed the Catskills. Igor was our 'teacher'. Prepared us for Sandy. So many here were unprepared.

A memory of someone feeling stupid filling the bathtub since they are on town water and not well water...not at all unlikely that your town water works floods and fails!...We always keep a full rain barrel if storm is predicted. Moved into the garage if winter.

If fresh suffering a power outage, sit down and make a list for the future.

A whole house generator can cost 15-20 grand. Need a concrete pad usually. Electrician to hookup, then yearly maintenance. A transfer switch is a tenth of that.

There are very inexpensive and easy ways to use your generator. But I can't tell you how here. The power company says it's not a good idea.

But there are many who can show you how and explain to you why the power company is wrong and why it is not dangerous.

dcarch

Good info! Thanks! My hubby lived in a castle in Scotland when he was little and they didn't have refrigeration! They shopped on a daily basis and had a marble shelf outside o keep things cold!

Wow, he lived in a castle? That's a far more interesting story than "I grew up on this farm in Northern Michigan", LOL.

Annie

I use the penny in ice trick....well actually not a penny a nickel, we don't do pennies anymore in Canada. Ice cream is a dead give away too.

There are very inexpensive and easy ways to use your generator. But I can't tell you how here. The power company says it's not a good idea.

Yes, of course, switching off the main breaker and plugging in a suicide cord will work in a pinch. But there are a lot of things that can go wrong. Don't do this. You are not only putting yourself and your own property at risk, you can also harm utility workers and emergency personnel that are unaware of what you did.

Transfer switches do admittedly cost a little money. But they are a much more predictable and safer way to do this.

Battery back up (e.g. Tesla PowerWall) or whole-house generator are great alternative solutions. But they cost a lot more. So, most people wouldn't want to go to this much trouble.

"----You are not only putting yourself and your own property at risk, you can also harm utility workers and emergency personnel that are unaware of what you did.-----"

Again, I do not recommend doing this. However, I think it is important to understand reality and science facts:

1. No utility worker will touch a wire without testing it if it is live, and they will not touch two wires at the same time without knowing for sure. They will not work in a situation if they are electrically ground.

2. There is no possible way you can start your generator if you don't disconnect your house breaker, because you will be shorting your generator to power every single neighbor's house on your street.

---------------------------------

If you are not in a position to have a full automatic electric generating system, and cannot operate a portable generator, consider the following:

Buy a 12vDC to 110vAC inverter. Depending on wattage, it will cost you from $50 to $200.

You can plug the inverter in your car and operate your wifi router, PC computer, cell phone, a few portable LED lights etc.

dcarch

One more thing, When you need to replace your car battery because it can't start your car reliably, don't give up your old battery. Keep it charged regularly.

A weak battery can still plenty powerful to operate a few LED lights for many hours, even days. Definitely can charge your phones and run your PC (with an inverter).

dcarch

However, I think it is important to understand reality and science facts:

You are assuming that everybody behaves rationally and according to plan. In an emergency (and that's when you would be using your generator), that's not exactly a given. Lots of people other than the home owner will be messing around with wires. Emergency personnel will flip breakers, often without having the luxury of being able to read instructions and/or tracing wires. Connections will be (partially) torn down. Etc. Etc.

Your generator might not be powering the entire neighborhood, because not all of the wires are still in place. But it'll still energize parts of the grid. And if that part is connected to a local transformer, there could be 50kV on some of these wires. After all, transformers work in both directions.

Yes, a lineman is supposed to check things and to take precautions. But not all of this will work correctly during a disaster situation. And many people assume that things don't suddenly change on them. But that's exactly what happens, if a home owner decides to power up a backfeed while an unsuspecting lineman is trying to do his work.

Just don't do it. There is no excuse for doing something this foolish, if you could easily get a transfer switch. They are not that expensive after all. And if you can't be bothered to do that, then plug your critical appliances directly into the generator. That's always a safe solution.

Just want to make clear the following:

1. As I said, again, Don't do it! I don't encourage anyone to do back-feed using your own generator in a black out.

2. I do want to make it clear that power company need to come up with convincing information that is true, otherwise people will continue to do things they don't want. When a lineman is out restoring a blackout, it is never an emergency as far as he is concerned. Checking if a line is hot is always a second nature in their line of work.

3. But the most important thing I need to understand, and I hope they can explain to me and many others, how is it physically possible to start your generator if you don't flip the breaker to disconnect you from a thousand other houses? It's like trying to pull a thousand tractor trailers with you riding on a bicycle. You see, unless you can tell me that I am wrong, your house is connected to the secondary winding of the transformer, so are all the other thousands of houses in your town. The huge electrical load presents a magnetic resistance which will instantly stop you from getting the generator working. BTW this magnetic resistance is how electric car use to brake the car.

As a matter of fact, in a different situation, you are encouraged to back feed to grid if you have a solar cell or wind generator electric system.

dcarch

As a matter of fact, in a different situation, you are encouraged to back feed to grid if you have a solar cell or wind generator electric system.

We have a whole house PV and battery back-up system. You wouldn't believe the amount of trouble we had to go through to ensure "island protection". That's what our utility calls the situation when your household (or your neighborhood) becomes temporarily isolated from the rest of the grid. It's now an island that has its own uncontrolled and unsynchronized power ... everything is fine, until somebody tries to connect it back to the rest of the grid.

When that happens, you'll see fireworks. Both sides of the grid are almost certainly out-of-phase. And that causes huge surges. These surges won't stop until something burns out and disconnects the generator.

So, no, you are never encouraged to directly feed back into the grid. The only times you would do this, there is a fancy control circuit in line that carefully checks whether it is safe to do so. And unless this circuit can 100% verify that it is safe to backfeed, it'll instead disconnect your house from the grid. Think of it as a transfer switch on steroids.

For PV systems, it's typically integrated with the inverter. For battery backup systems, it's usually a separate component.

That's also the reason why PV systems, as a rule, cannot power your house during a power outage. There is no safe way to do this unless you also have backup batteries and additional safety equipment.

"-------That's also the reason why PV systems, as a rule, cannot power your house during a power outage. There is no safe way to do this unless you also have backup batteries and additional safety equipment."

A PV panel generates low voltage DC, and the voltage and current are variable depends on sunlight intensity. This is not good for charging batteries (12v or 24v if lead acid batteries) or to power up any electrical devices in your house. So the PV power is smoothed out by a voltage regulator (step-up and step-down) to charge a pack of storage batteries .Also, typically a blocking diode is inline to protect the regulator form the batteries. The battery's low voltage DC is converted to 110v AC by using switching electronic high frequency transformer which than slowed down to synchronize the output to 60Hz exact timing as the power company's supply. Otherwise all your electric clocks will do funny things, and your computer many not work well.

When it gets warmer, I will be building my PV system.

dcarch

I must have really good homeowner's insurance. American Family. We had a huge wind storm about 15 years ago that dropped a tree on our roof and took out our power mast. My whole side of the street lost their power due to numerous trees falling on the power lines.

It was almost 5 days before we got our power back (last on the block to do so). We live in a village not out in the country! After 4 days we emptied out the chest freezer and the refrigerator freezer. I recall I had to itemize all the food and we got a check back from our insurance company. Good thing too as we had about 1/2 a hog left in the chest freezer.

I actually took some of the meat over to the neighbors on the other side of the street since they had power and handed out free ham, pork roasts ect.

It was odd to sit in the dark for 5 nights while the other side of the street had their lights and T.V.'s on.

spartanapples, the same thing happened here during the 5 day outage. We had no power, although I did have city water and that natural gas stove that I lit with a match. However, my oldest daughter had a boyfriend that lived one block away and they had power. She went there for showers because although I could light the stove I couldn't figure out how to light the pilot on that gas hot water heater. It was just very.....odd....being able to look out the window and see lights on the next block.

If I had any home damage, like your tree on the roof, I'd have submitted an insurance claim. Since it was only the contents of the freezer, by the time I paid the deductible I wouldn't have had a large enough amount left to be beneficial to make a claim.

Annie

Circuits may be split within a neighborhood or area, and that can change over time. My power has been out, house across the street (an FM road) is lit. There's a relatively new school 1/2 mile up the road. My house was on the same circuit, which had some degree of priority during an outage because of the school. The electric provider changed the circuit layout so they could feed up to the the school from a different direction if necessary so now my house can be out, and the school not.

Annie, yep, lived in a castle! Then after his dad finished his fellowship in Neurosurgery in Scotland they moved back to Pasadena. The parents were so impressed with the schooling, they sent 3 of the 4 boys to Scotland to be schooled!

He saw prince Charles playing in Hamlet, and went to school with Tony Blair!

This is a question:

Does the quality of the meat before it froze have a bearing on how long the meat is usable after thawed.

Im thinking of the cattle we grew 30 years ago. When we called them in we didn't age the beef. The first butcher was very unhappy, so he didn't get the rest. We started the job over the week-end and dressed them early the next week.

So, if we freeze the beef un-aged, can we age it after freezing.

But I would say that some of the meat we see at the store would make me extremely cautious.

John, I've aged beef in the refrigerator, smaller amounts like a tenderloin for Christmas dinner, not anything large, like a front quarter or entire primal.

I wouldn't refreeze it after aging it, I'd only age what I was going to use, I think, as freezing/thawing/aging/refreezing/thawing is probably going to compromise the quality of your beef.

This study done by beefextension.com, says there is no difference between aging fresh beef and aging previously frozen beef, so I'd say that the short answer is "yes", with some reservations.

http://www.beefextension.com/research_reports/1993rr/93_10.pdf

Annie