Deep freezer condensation

I have a domestic top loading deep freeze in my villa here, and now that it is winter we are able to open windows and turn off the air-conditioning most of the day.

However the humidity levels are elevated, and now the deep freeze is dripping condensation from the bottom. There is a cardboard/fabric type of cover that I'll need to remove, clean of all the fungus that has grown, and hopefully dry out.

Thinking about installing a deep freeze on a boat, where the humidity levels are much higher, has anyone else experienced this issue? Do you generally install a plastic tray or drip pan under the appliance?

PS- I have not experienced this problem with my refrigerator. So I'm thinking that perhaps when I open up the unit that I'll find broken down insulation??

Greetings,
Mr. m. IF a freezer is well insulated there should be little or no condensation to deal with. Refrigerators have less of a problem because the temperature differential is less than that of a freezer. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dew_point


Your house freezer is either not insulated against the warm moist air well enough OR, as you guessed, the insulation has broken down. Perhaps not totally broken down but maybe just in one spot where the air is able to come in contact with the cold freezer wall,condense and then drip.

I will check it out tomorrow. I suppose it makes sense that the insulation could break down. During the summer the temp inside the house easily is 110 degrees with aircon off. Even bags of rubber bands in our cabinets become brittle and worthless by end of summer.

I'd hate to think about the damage that a small unknown drip in a boat could do, both to the plywood subfloor or to the steel structure in a metal boat. Starting to think that drip trays under the wet appliances (refer, freeze, washer) in a boat would be a good idea.

We used to live in Arizona. A friend from California bought a second home in Arizona and he turned off the A/C during the summer and left the house closed up. When he came back the next fall, all the candles had melted, the ceiling fan circuit boards had melted and cans of soda had exploded due to the heat. i told him to leave the A/C turned on and set to 90. Then he had no more issues.

Soda cans exploding... now that is funny! I don't buy soda, but luckily my beer has always been safe. When we go on long trips my daughters even put all their makeup in the refrigerator.

But we can't leave the aircon on constantly because if a split unit starts to drip or fails while we are away the damage would be too much. Even when home we turn off when leaving the house because the electric bill would be too high. The level-2 and level-3 penalties that the gov't charges for electric and water usage are very high.

Keep in mind that our last villa was 2,000 sf and we had 12 tons of cooling - way too expensive.

We get condensation around our freezer door handle when we have high humidity and high ambient temperatures. The refrigerator is fine since that has a heat strip around the door handle area. Why the builder didn’t add one for freezer, I have no idea? Some house units have anti-sweat heaters that you can turn off to save energy.

On had a reach in freeze on our last boat and we added more insulation on the top but even with 4”, when the humidity was high we had some condensation.

So it turns out that the bottom insulation, which was standard polyurethane open cell (the yellow stuff) was completely saturated with water. Insulation with water does not insulate. There must have been a small break in the past that allowed a tiny bit of condensation, which then snowballed. It would have been impractical to scrape out the entire layer (plus honestly not worth the effort) so I heavily caulked a thick polystyrene board to the bottom, sealing it tight. It looks great and we'll see how well it works over the next few months.

However this drives home the disadvantages of spray in foam for metal boats, which a lot of people love - when it gets wet it is a big gruesome worthless mess. And a boat is on the water.

Pretty much every commercial shipyard that I have visited and discussed builds with, have stated that they only install rock wool.

makobuilders said:

I have a domestic top loading deep freeze in my villa here, and now that it is winter we are able to open windows and turn off the air-conditioning most of the day.

However the humidity levels are elevated, and now the deep freeze is dripping condensation from the bottom. There is a cardboard/fabric type of cover that I'll need to remove, clean of all the fungus that has grown, and hopefully dry out.

Thinking about installing a deep freeze on a boat, where the humidity levels are much higher, has anyone else experienced this issue? Do you generally install a plastic tray or drip pan under the appliance?

PS- I have not experienced this problem with my refrigerator. So I'm thinking that perhaps when I open up the unit that I'll find broken down insulation??

Click to expand...

I just had a freezer installed above the washer/dryer in the closet. The bottom of the freezer door was cold and wet. We called SeaFreeze and were told that it wasn't wired properly. Freezers have low voltage wires that run along the outside edge of the door that keeps the outside edge of the door warm which, reduces condensation. Once we got it wired properly, that took care of the problem - mostly. If there is anything keeping the door from sealing completely closed the bottom and top edge of the door will get very cold and wet. It's something that I have to be very careful of with this particular freezer.