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About this tool
Choose deep freezer litres from household size or stock weight, with holdover time in a power cut and backup sizing.
This selector converts either household head-count or a weight of food into the deep freezer capacity you should buy, using the standard storage density of 35 lb of packed food per cubic foot — 0.56 kg per litre — and an allowance of 1.5 cubic feet per person. It then divides by packing efficiency (about 80% in a chest freezer, 70% in an upright) to get gross litres, and reports how long the load stays frozen in a power cut under USDA guidance of 48 hours full and 24 hours half-full. Written for households comparing 200 L against 300 L cabinets and for small shops sizing frozen stock.
Open Deep Freezer Size Selector on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Enter the values you already know.
Fine-tune the options to match your scenario.
Read the result and use it in your planning or reporting.
Advertised litres are not storage litres — baskets, walls and air gaps take 20-30%, and the answer accounts for that.
Reports the safe hours without power at your actual fill level, since a half-empty freezer thaws twice as fast.
Gives the battery amp-hours and the inverter VA needed for the compressor's start-up surge, not just its running watts.
About 250 litres gross for moderate bulk buying. The standard allowance is 1.5 cubic feet (42.5 L) of storage per person, so four people need about 170 usable litres, which becomes roughly 212 gross litres once chest-freezer packing efficiency of 80% is applied — putting a 250 L cabinet in the right place.
Roughly 90 kg of packed food. Usable volume in a chest freezer is about 80% of the advertised litres, so 200 L gives 160 usable litres, and packed food stores at about 0.56 kg per litre — the standard 35 lb per cubic foot figure.
About 48 hours if it is full and the lid stays closed, and about 24 hours if it is half full, per USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service guidance. Every opening resets the clock, which is why keeping the freezer at least two-thirds full is both cheaper to run and safer in an outage.
For running cost and outage resilience, yes. Cold air falls out of an upright every time the door opens, and its baskets and shelves cut usable volume to about 70% against 80% in a chest. Uprights win on floor space and on reaching items without unpacking the whole cabinet.
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