Personally I’ve never had a problem.
Until I retired a few years ago, I’ve never lived in a centrally heated house, and my fridges and freezers have worked fine.
Previously my main freezer was at the top of the cellar steps, off a room which was often unheated.

Since we moved over to Buxton, the fridge & fridge/freezer live in the kitchen, but the 2nd freezer lives in the garage workshop.
I looked earlier this evening, and it was 0.3°C out there earlier.

By coincidence, Lidl were selling non-contact thermometers today for £7.50; they seem pretty good for the money too.
Our House & Garage freezers were both showing -10°C, so no real difference.
I think there might be an issue in colder climates, where maybe the surrounding temperature is well below zero, particularly if you wanted to use the fast freeze option.

This is a US article which sheds a bit of light on it; I should say though that our various fridges and freezers are probably well on to 30 years old, maybe more, so the technology might have changed a bit with the drive for low energy consumption appliances.

Bill

FWIW, this is what the instructions for my Frigidaire chest freezer say on the matter:

“For the most efficient operation, the appliance
should be located where surrounding
temperatures will not exceed 110°F (43°C).
Temperatures of 32°F (0°C) and below will
NOT affect operation. Additional compressor
heaters are not recommended.”

We had a standard chest freezer in an unheated pre-fab concrete garage and the condensation on the freezer was awful. The ground beneath would be damp with the drips.

James.

Hi Robin, most fridges, freezers and fridge/freezers are designed to work at the best energy saving, when in an ambient temperature between 16 to 32 C, but their lowest operating temperature is normally no lower than 10 C. To get to a lower temperature, I suspect you probably need a higher rated compressor and or a different refridgerent, which will probably push up the price of the unit you require. I had this problem when I first move into where I am now, and my fridge/freezer had to be put in an unheated room, but then came the first winter, where the temperature outside fell to about -13 C, and it stopped working, so I had to go out and get one that would work in unheated outside buildings, which would continue to work down to -15 C, and as you may guess, it cost a lot more than a fridge/freezer of the same size as those that would work in normal indoor room temperatures.

Regards Nick.

UNLESS you have information to the contrary DO NOT put a  freezer in an unheated space The first issue is to do with switching the compressor, the stat ! I had to deal with 2 that failed in cold weather in garages. Nothing wrong with either of them except the fact somewhat ridiculously that it was tOO cold ! Combined fridge/ freezer are more prone to this due to their method of operation ! The second is less common but have seen it on several occasions, MICE ! They find the warm area around the commpressor appealing and can’t get out of that dammed silly habit of nibbling, in this case the live wires – this will drop the RCD, the carcass will decompose, only later to desicate ! One can now reset the RCD as the leakage is below 30Ma. It is best though  to remove the remains with the power off ! BEFORE dumping a failed unit it is worth checking this is NOT the problem ! Noel

PS the dropped RCD may go sometime un unnoticed before it is found and the contents spoiled !

MAY BE I should have pointed out that below 5 or 6c is when the trouble can start ! My tales of woe go back over 25 years, newer units with electronic stats etc may be OK ? Noel.

I had a Bosch upright freezer in my garage for several years and it would play up if the ambient temperature fell too low.  Initially not recognising the problem I had a couple of instances where it failed and the contents spoiled.  I eventually called in a Bosch engineer who faffed about with meters and thermometers for a while before advising me of the problem which he clearly knew about all along but was justifying his visit.  The problem was that the condenser would collect a coating of water which would drip away in normal temperatures but freeze if it was too cold.  Once a coating of ice had formed the process became self sustaining, the ice would build up and the condenser was unable to function. The answer was to replace the Bosch, which was designed for indoor use, with a Blomberg machine designed for use either indoors or in outside areas such as sheds and garages.  Problem has not recurred for 5 years.

Hope this helps.

Jim

Hi Dave Halford, I bought my old fridge/freezer around 30 years ago, and it was still working fine when I moved to where I am now, so this was before the refrigerant was changed, and when the cold snap came and it stopped working, and having looked at the trouble shooter in the user manual, and read the minimum ambient was 10 C, it dawned on me that was the problem, and when the cold snap was over, it worked fine again, so I don’t think the change makes any difference. When I bought my new one, even then they were listed for either outbuildings or not, and that was from PC world/Curry’s

Regards Nick.

I’m missing something here…

• For a freezer, the gas at the compressor inlet is likely to be at about -18°C. If it isn’t, your food is going to become inedible rather rapidly, in the UK, temperatures below -18° C are incredibly rare.
• For the condenser to be covered in ice is not a problem under any conditions, the condenser will reject heat into ice better than it will reject heat into air.

I can believe that combined fridge freezers with only a single pump will fail to work correctly if the ambient temperature is lower than the fridge’s set point, also that a fridge with butane as the refrigerant will fail to work if the ambient temperature approaches 0°C, although in that case, the food will be well within the desired temperature range even if the fridge is turned off.

I do have a dehumidifier that will not work at low temperatures, and had a heat pump clothes dryer that had the same issue, but they are both relatively high temperature heat pumps, with different refrigerant requirements than freezers have.

Can anyone shed further light on this?

mine lives in the shed ,no problem

parents have kept one in theres for 25 years no problem

might be a problem in theory, but they work

I was surprised to see that freezers shouldn’t be used in unheated rooms.  Our upright freezer is in our “cellier” which is unheated and I often leave the window open at night to keep it cool.  No problems so far and the compressor seems to run less often when it is cold which must mean less energy consumption.

However, I have just looked out the user guide that came with it about five years ago and that gives the ambient operating temperature as 16 to 38 C!  I must reconsider how cold I keep it.

Russell

On 19 January 2024 at 14:30 Mark Rand Said:

…

• For the condenser to be covered in ice is not a problem under any conditions, the condenser will reject heat into ice better than it will reject heat into air.

…

A mistake I think.  Ice is a fairly good insulator and bad things will happen if the radiator can’t get rid of the excess heat.  The  compressor would work much harder, perhaps over-heating the motor.

Another issue might be that the chiller emits a measured dose of refrigerant into the evaporator, the size of which is related to temperature, pressure and the refrigerant type.  This is done to maximise efficiency.  Possibly the dose is wrong when the pressure side gets too hot due an iced up radiator, or pumping extra cold gas doesn’t quite deliver enough pressure.  Either would tend to overwork the compressor, and domestic freezers are only fitted with motors designed to work hard in short bursts.

I’m not sure anecdotal evidence is worth much.  To find out what works and what doesn’t, we need to know:

• The temperature of the unheated space
• The type of refrigerant the chiller is filled with
• How the refrigerant doses are controlled, nozzle, valve etc
• The motor rating, and how long it runs when ambient temperature is too low

I guess the risk of trouble rises as the temperature drops below the makers recommendation, and for how long it stays below.  Much depends on individual circumstances – a flimsy south facing wooden shed in Cornwall is probably low risk, whilst the same north facing in a Scottish frost-trap is asking for it.

As most of the UK rarely gets very hot or very cold my guess is that many ordinary freezers are performing well enough in unheated rooms.  I have one, bought second-hand, that’s been in an unheated utility room for at least 25 years.  Low risk because the temperature rarely falls below 10C.  (Worried about frost, I measured 8C on Wednesday evening when it was -4C outside.)

This stuff is rarely black and white – you need a large sample and all the data.  The result of running a freezer in a cold garage is shortened life rather than instant obvious failure.  Maybe it fails after 10 years when it would have lasted 15 indoors, and that doesn’t matter.

Dave