05 August 2017

Un nouveau congélateur

Yesterday we bought a new freezer to put in the downstairs utility room. The old one, a Whirlpool freezer that still works fine, is 12 years old. It's been making me nervous. If it gave up the ghost, we'd really have to scramble to get and new one and save the contents of the old freezer. So we're getting a new one now, before it becomes some kind of emergency.


Here's the one we found and chose. We are buying it locally so that we will have some recourse with the merchant if there are problems.

It's a Hotpoint-Ariston model, an upright freezer (un congélateur armoire), it's called in French) with two shelves (at the top) and four drawers. It's frost-free, which in French is called froid ventilé (as opposed to froid statique) and dégivrage automatique rather than dégivrage manuel. In other words, it doesn't need to be defrosted. The old freezer is a chest-type appliance and uses froid statique so it requires manual defrosting periodically.

We plan to keep the old freezer too, for as long as it works. We are approaching our big harvest season, and there are so many tomatoes out in the garden that we'll need a lot of space for tomato sauce, for example. We are already freezing this year's green beans, and we have more zucchini than we can eat now.

The freezer dimensions are 169 x 60 x 68 in centimeters. That's 66½ inches tall, about 24 inches wide, and about 27 inches deep. The usable capacity is 222 liters, according to the manufacturer's specs. That's nearly eight cubic feet, which is about the same size as the old Whirlpool chest-style freezer.

Besides garden produce (kale, chard, collard greens, etc.), we also freeze leftovers from the kitchen and meats that we buy on special (sausages, pork roasts, beef steaks and stew meat, chicken, fish, and so on).

If you know anything specifically about Hotpoint-Ariston appliances, please leave a comment. It wouldn't be too late for us to cancel the order. And if you have information or opinions about upright freezers in general, I'd be glad to hear from you.

I am just reading on Wikipedia that Hotpoint is a brand now manufactured by the Italian firm Indesit, 60% of which is owned by Whirlpool. Appliances sold in the U.K. are branded as Hotpoint, and in France as Hotpoint-Ariston. I've read customer reviews and comments on this model (UH6F1CW) in both English and French, and while the great majority are positive they aren't very informative because they're mostly written by people who've only recently bought the freezer. They can't comment on long-term reliability. So you take your chances, as usual.

11 comments:

  1. That's a very sensible idea........as long as both are half empty............LOL!!!
    Mind you, an upright freezer definitely beats rummaging around in the depths of a chest freezer any day, at least you stand more chance of seeing what you ou've got in there.

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  2. Wise decision, perfect timing and a very good choice. May it last at least for another 12 years!

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  3. Our freezer is old - very old. We got it when we moved into this house 32 years ago! Every time I have to defrost it -- twice a year, I think it's time to get a new, energy-efficient, self-defrosting one. May you be our inspiration!

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    1. What company made that long-life freezer? I hope the freezer we're buying will last as long.

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  4. Congrats, it is lovely :) If that even matters ( to anyone but me ) .. Good that the old one still works, you can enjoy having more space than you need for frozen things .. I think "long life" means different things to different people...
    To us it means we get to live to be really old. To appliance manufacturers it means they live until the day after the warrantee runs out :)
    I can see you now, madly picking and parboiling and freezing the summer bounty .. have fun !!

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  5. Appliances aren't built to last now. No longer does a fridge last for forty years. Anything over ten years for such an appliance is bonus time. In ten years time, your will be ???

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    1. The conventional wisdom here in France is that home appliances are made to last about 10 years now. Then they need to be replaced. Our clothes dryer is 14 years old, but we hardly use it at all. The washing machine, refrigerator, and kitchen stove have all been replaced over the past two or three years. Next will have to be the dishwasher. We didn't get the old freezer until 2005, because after starting our vegetable garden in 2004 and enjoying a fantastic harvest, a freezer seemed to be a requirement.

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  6. We have a 32 year old frig, plus a 25 year old upright freezer that needs to be defrosted pretty soon. What Andrew says about longevity of modern appliances seems to be correct, but I hope your new (and old) freezers last a long time.

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  7. A very sensible idea, may you enjoy many happy years filling it with your home grown produce.
    Our integrated Liebherr (i.e. built-in) fridge/freezer is seventeen years old, and this summer I've finally "retired" it, although it was still going strong. The freezer section was small and needed defrosting too often. A couple of years ago I bought a Zanussi fridge/freezer which is totally self defrosting - an absolute bonus. This replaced a large five drawer Zanussi freezer which took too much time and energy to fill - especially as I didn't grow my own veg or fruit.

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  8. Hotpoint is an old brand name, with a good reputation, but as others have noted, appliances now are made with planned obsolescence in mind. Still, something you don't have to defrost should be a big improvement for efficiency. And I've found that upright freezers are so much easier to use.
    I love that the name sounds (in Franglish translation) as if it's a "congealer", which is just what you want it to do.

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    1. In my reading, I've learned that Hotpoint was started up in California more than 100 years ago by a man from Wisconsin. He invented the first electric iron. The Hotpoint was bought by General Electric, and the GE/Hotpoint factory was and still is in Louisville, Kentucky. Hotpoint has a 23% market share for "white goods" (appareils électroménagers, home appliances) in the U.K., where it started making appliances nearly 100 years ago. More recently, Hotpoint in the U.S. has been bought by a Chinese company (Haier) and the European Hotpoint division has come under the control of Whirlpool. Whew!

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