Many of you have asked why I chose manual defrost. This is not meant to be a debate as to which is better or why some choose frost-free while some choose manual defrost — just my reasons. And, sometimes I get things in my head that make sense to no one but me so . . take it for what it’s worth.
- This freezer will be used only for storing meat. I will open it probably twice a week and get out the meat we need for the next few days. Frost will not build up in it like it would in a freezer we were opening 3 or 4 times a day. I would definitely not want a manual defrost freezer as part of my fridge. A manual defrost freezer that isn’t opened several times a day shouldn’t need to be defrosted more than once a year.
- It will be placed in the room in the basement (the one I wanted for my longarm) and a drain hose can easily be run outside to drain it when it is defrosted.
- In theory, because of the dehydration, food should last longer in a manual defrost freezer without showing freezer burn.
- The frost-free freezers have more than can go wrong with them. There’s a time or sensor of some sort that tells it when to run the defrost cycle. I actually had a fridge catch on fire once during the defrost cycle. The heating element heated up too much or for too long and melted all the plastic in the top of the fridge. Granted . . things like this seem to happen to me more than to most people.
- The frost-free freezers cycle. When it’s in defrost mode, the temp inside goes up a bit – not enough to cause anything to thaw but there is a bit of fluctuation in the temp inside the freezer..
None of these reasons are enough to cause me to want to swap out my side by side frost free fridge/freezer units for manual defrost fridges but for a freezer, all I’ll ever have is manual defrost.
Judy L.