# Using garage space for pantry/spare fridge/freezer... freezing temperatures?



## Addy (Mar 12, 2010)

We are in Ontario and new to having an attached garage, and I have been using a surplus buffet/hutch unit as extra pantry storage in our garage. It was fine during the fall, but now we have freezing temperatures I'm worried about canned and jarred goods freezing and shattering/breaking, should I be?

We also have our spare fridge in the garage and I'm concerned about things freezing inside the fridge, should I be? so far nothing has but I'm a bit surprised. If not for the sake of frozen food in the fridge, is it wise to run a fridge in an unheated garage over the winter? Will it wreck the components? Same for a chest freezer?


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## the-royal-mail (Dec 11, 2009)

To me the bigger hassle is having to get all my winter clothes on, boots etc or freeze my a-s off. Seems to me this could be solved by some cheap CDN Tire heaters or by at least heating/insulating the garage somehow.


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## mind_business (Sep 24, 2011)

We ran our chest freezer in our detached garage in Saskatchewan. I'm pretty sure the motor never turned on during the winter, only spring, summer and fall.

Our garage in SW Ontario is attached (single car), and fully insulated ... but not heated. The temp never goes below 0 degrees. Depends on where you live in Ontario, and whether your garage is insulated.

Not a canning expert, so I can't offer any advice there


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## MoneyGal (Apr 24, 2009)

We have an attached, uninsulated mudroom that I use as cold storage through the fall and winter. So far, I've never had any problems with canned foods freezing - and I'm an avid canner, so there's a lot of jars in there.  

You could get a recording thermometer and check the temperatures - but generally you'd need a sustained below-freezing stretch to affect your canned goods, and even then they might be fine (depending on how much room they have to expand in the jar).


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## uptoolate (Oct 9, 2011)

Agree with what has been posted. We have always used our attached garages as cold storage in winter without incident. In fact, I just brought some bags of milk in off the back deck. That's the great thing about the bags - even if they freeze (yes they did!) it's still ok. 

I would say it depends a bit on where you live in Ontario, whether you have any insulation in the garage, how well insulated the wall is between the house and the garage, how often the kids leave the inside door to the garage open (groan), whether the outside garage walls have northern or western exposure, etc, etc. As mentioned you could get a thermometer and see what the temps are. Cottage Life had an article last year about what could freeze without really causing any trouble and what one had to worry about. 

As far as running the fridge or freezer in a cold space, I would check your owner's manual. If it gets below zero in the garage, lubrication in the compressor could be compromised. I have heard it suggested that putting a 40 watt incandescent light bulb beside the compressor can prevent this. That said, we had our old fridge in the garage for ages without incident. We didn't run it continuously, and less in cold weather obviously, but it seemed to be ok.


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## Potato (Apr 3, 2009)

Depends on a lot of things. We had an attached garage with the door and 1 uninsulated wall making it pretty cold -- less variable and a bit warmer than directly outside, but still cold. We could leave pop out there until we had a few -10 to -15 days outside, then it would start to freeze and explode. 

For some canned/jarred things, there may be enough salt or sugar in solution that freezing isn't much of an issue.


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## Addy (Mar 12, 2010)

the-royal-mail said:


> To me the bigger hassle is having to get all my winter clothes on, boots etc or freeze my a-s off. Seems to me this could be solved by some cheap CDN Tire heaters or by at least heating/insulating the garage somehow.



Thanks everyone, I knew I would get some great responses here! TRM your post made me laugh.... we have five oil-filled heaters we used in Manitoba, but here in Ontario there's no way we would run them to heat our garage... just thinking about the cost of hydro makes me cringe!

The garage is mostly uninsulated (hubby did one wall up for his workbench and he insulated in behind it but other than that it's uninsulated). May be worth his while to insulate the rest of it it sounds like.

I read somewhere else about running a light near the compressor, I may look into that further, as well as read up on the manual for the fridge. We have two boarders so that second fridge comes in mighty handy and the most convenient space for it is in the garage but we may be able to move it into the office if need be.


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## jamesbe (May 8, 2010)

Yeah really depends on the garage. At my last place I had water in a Jung in the garage and it never froze, but my new place it froze already!


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## Addy (Mar 12, 2010)

Just brought the rest of the Christmas turkey in from the fridge in the garage.... frozen!  Guess it's time to stop using that fridge or move it inside... sigh.


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## Plugging Along (Jan 3, 2011)

I'm in AB. I've never had the fridge in the garage, but the freezer was fine. 

I have a food shelf near the my door that leads in the house (it's seems to be one of the warmer spots). I find, I'm usually okay, except when we have more than 2 days in the row of more than -20. The items near the ground tend to freeze, but if it's higher up, I haven't had the same problems.


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## Barwelle (Feb 23, 2011)

MoneyGal said:


> ...and I'm an avid canner...


You're the best.

Home made canned goods are awesome.


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## OhGreatGuru (May 24, 2009)

Addy said:


> ...
> 
> The garage is mostly uninsulated (hubby did one wall up for his workbench and he insulated in behind it but other than that it's uninsulated). May be worth his while to insulate the rest of it it sounds like.
> 
> I read somewhere else about running a light near the compressor, I may look into that further, as well as read up on the manual for the fridge. We have two boarders so that second fridge comes in mighty handy and the most convenient space for it is in the garage but we may be able to move it into the office if need be.


If the garage is mostly uninsulated it will get too cold for canned storage. If you are desparate for storage space but don't want to insulate or heat the whole garage, see if you have room to build an insulated storage closet in the garage with a thermostatically controlled electric heater in it.

Sub-zero temperatures will not be good for either a freezer or refrigerator compressor. In the case of a fridge the contents will also eventually freeze if garage is too cold.

PS. By the way, fridge & freezer compressor cycles work by rejecting heat into the room air. So by putting them into an uninsulated & unheated garage you are wasting that heat energy most of the year.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

Addy said:


> We are in Ontario and new to having an attached garage, and I have been using a surplus buffet/hutch unit as extra pantry storage in our garage. It was fine during the fall, but now we have freezing temperatures I'm worried about canned and jarred goods freezing and shattering/breaking, should I be?
> 
> We also have our spare fridge in the garage and I'm concerned about things freezing inside the fridge, should I be? so far nothing has but I'm a bit surprised. If not for the sake of frozen food in the fridge, is it wise to run a fridge in an unheated garage over the winter? Will it wreck the components? Same for a chest freezer?


A friend of mine ran a chest freezer for years in an unheated garage..no problems with the compressor or the food inside.
She replaced the old chest freezer with my old fridge (when I bought my new energy efficient fridge) and runs that in the garage with no problems...

What are you worried about?

If it's just canned jars..make a group of shelves and mount them against a warm heated wall..the heat lost through the R12 (2x4 walls) will prevent the immediate space around the wall from dropping below freezing.

Hang a mercury thermometer on that wall to monitor the temp inside the garage next to the canned food and 
you will know better what the actual garage temperature is even at -20C.

Tack and old blanket or something similar to the shelves to keep that bit of transferred heat inside the shelves and the cold air from outside affecting the cans/jars when the garage is opened briefly.

Just don't leave the garage door open for more than a few minutes and the heat loss through the walls will keep the garage a "couple" of degrees above 0C.


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## hboy43 (May 10, 2009)

OhGreatGuru said:


> If the garage is mostly uninsulated it will get too cold for canned storage. If you are desparate for storage space but don't want to insulate or heat the whole garage, see if you have room to build an insulated storage closet in the garage with a thermostatically controlled electric heater in it.
> 
> Sub-zero temperatures will not be good for either a freezer or refrigerator compressor. In the case of a fridge the contents will also eventually freeze if garage is too cold.
> 
> PS. By the way, fridge & freezer compressor cycles work by rejecting heat into the room air. So by putting them into an uninsulated & unheated garage you are wasting that heat energy most of the year.


I'd say find somewhere in the house for the cans, they don't need to be cold.

The last comment makes no sense as with the fridge or freezer already cold, there is no (or reduced) heat to reject, so no (or reduced) energy used. Plus the energy used to run the comnpressor is electricity, much more expensive than the energy used typically by the heating plant, that is usually gas.

FYI I run a freezer in the cold storage. The manual said not to run in cold temperatures, but again even if it is hard on the compressor, the compressor is running infrequently with low ambient temperature. Been out there 4 or 5 years now.

My last comment is that a refrigerator freezer compartment will not keep foods frozen at low ambient temperatures. The controller keeps the fridge at the set temperature (say 4 degrees) and the freezer gets cooled as a side effect (or is an open loop system). Imagine if the garage ambient temperature is equal to the fridge setpoint temperature say 4 degrees, then the compressor does not run and in the long run the freezer is also at 4 degrees.

hboy43

hboy43


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## jcgd (Oct 30, 2011)

I've had a Danby freezer chest outside for two years now. Cheap of the cheap, but it's still running fine. It doesn't run most of the winter except when chinooks come in. It gets down to around -40 a few times in the winter here in Calgary.


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## carverman (Nov 8, 2010)

hboy43 said:


> I'd say find somewhere in the house for the cans, they don't need to be cold.
> 
> The last comment makes no sense as with the fridge or freezer already cold, there is no (or reduced) heat to reject, so no (or reduced) energy used. Plus the energy used to run the comnpressor is electricity, much more expensive than the energy used typically by the heating plant, that is usually gas.


Not sure on the context of the above statement, but it all depends on the thermostat setting that runs the compressor and where that thermostat is located. Generally fridges and freezers have an internally located thermostat..which ONLY turns on the compressor when the temperature inside the fridge or freezer rises above the preset point.
Fridges and freezers are closed loop systems, not like window a/c which requires an exhaust port to the outside air.

So in a cooler environment (basement or unheated garage), the fridge or
freezer will run less than at room temperature. 



> FYI I run a freezer in the cold storage. The manual said not to run in cold temperatures, but again even if it is hard on the compressor, the compressor is running infrequently with low ambient temperature. Been out there 4 or 5 years now.


Yes, most manuals tell you not to run freezers in cold temperatures, because the parts inside the compressor may contract
at low temperatures if the compressor hasn't been running for a while..but it doesn't affect the freon, and it takes more startup current to get it going..but once it's running..there is no difference. Freezers should be monitored with a freezer
thermometer. 



> My last comment is that a *refrigerator freezer compartment will not keep foods frozen at low ambient temperatures. The controller keeps the fridge at the set temperature (say 4 degrees) and the freezer gets cooled as a side effec*t (or is an open loop system). Imagine if the garage ambient temperature is equal to the fridge setpoint temperature say 4 degrees, then the compressor does not run and in the long run the freezer is also at 4 degrees.


HUH??? Most fridges have dual thermostat control..one for the fridge and one for the freezer. With only one compressor,
"driving" the cooling tubes in the freezer and fridge compartment, it does take more time to reach equilibrium, but
once that is done..the single compressor system can maintain fairly accurate settings in each compartment based
on the individual thermostats. With a single thermostat..yes..there is more compromise.

Anyway...why would you want to set a freezer at +4C????
Doesn't make any sense to me. If I had a freezer I would be setting it to well below freezing point of the food inside,
so it should make any difference to the freezer..whether the room temp is at +4 or -10C. 

read this..http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_typical_temperature_of_a_household_freezer


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## hboy43 (May 10, 2009)

carverman said:


> HUH??? Most fridges have dual thermostat control..one for the fridge and one for the freezer. With only one compressor,
> "driving" the cooling tubes in the freezer and fridge compartment, it does take more time to reach equilibrium, but
> once that is done..the single compressor system can maintain fairly accurate settings in each compartment based
> on the individual thermostats. With a single thermostat..yes..there is more compromise.
> ...


I was not aware that the units now have two thermostats and two "output controls" so to speak. If this is true, then OK. Do you have a web technical reference explaining this new development (that is new to my experience, below)?

The one I learned this lesson on the hard way had one thermostat that controlled the refrigerator compartment. Then there were two controls 
thet directed the compressor cooling to the fridge and freezer compartments. This whole arrangement is open loop on the freezer compartment and assumes a fixed ambient temperature and fixed refrigerator compartment temperature for a fixed freezer temperature. I assure you that when I came home to my house at ambient 5C after a week, my freezer food was quite thawed, but the fridge was happy at 4C.

I never said I wanted to set the freezer temperature at 4C???

hboy43


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## Rusty O'Toole (Feb 1, 2012)

A fridge or freezer, in a freezing space, won't even come on. Why should it? So you get refrigeration for nothing. Cold won't hurt it.

The fridge is insulated so it is not likely to freeze inside unless it is very cold or below freezing for several days.

Canned goods should be kept cool but not frozen. The basement is the usual place to put them.


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## Addy (Mar 12, 2010)

It's more the compressor etc I'm worried about. We ended up moving the fridge inside mainly because the owner manual stated it should not run in a freezing environment (sorry I don't remember exactly what temp).


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## Rusty O'Toole (Feb 1, 2012)

Well if it's already freezing why would it even come on? I suppose if you were worried you could unplug it in winter.


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## Addy (Mar 12, 2010)

Rusty O'Toole said:


> Well if it's already freezing why would it even come on? I suppose if you were worried you could unplug it in winter.


I should have not used the word "run". The fridge should not be in a below freezing environment, plugged in or not. The comprssor and i imagine other components are not built to be outside in sub zero temps. 

Sorry if that caused any confusion.


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