Freezers: How To Deal With a Power Cut and Broken Ice Maker

The thought of a broken freezer can strike terror into your heart. The following tips can help you preserve your freezer contents as possible in an electricity outage.

First things first. It can be very handy to know exactly what you have in your freezer at the time of the power cut. If you know hat the contents are, you can better deal with an outage.

• Keep a list of your freezer's contents. If you know what’s inside it could help decide how to deal with an electricity cut.
• Colour code different types of foods. For example, you could choose blue for fish, red for meats and yellow for baked goods. List these items and keep the piece of paper close to the fridge for check off once an item is removed for cooking. Colour coding also helps you locate items right away.

• Get into the habit of putting the newest items at the back or bottom of the freezer and placing the oldest ones in more accessible spots. This way, they will be used according to age.

A long power cut can destroy frozen foods. If your frozen goods are at risk, the following tips may help save them.

• These appliances have good insulation and will retain cold for a while. If your freezer is full, food could keep for 48 hours. If it is only part-full, this amount of time could be cut by half.
• If the bad news is that your freezer is going to be off for more than two days pick up some dry ice and carefully place in your freezer. You can get hold of this from most clear-ice suppliers. Make sure that you don’t make skin contact with the dry ice or let it touch your food. Carry it with heavy gloves and in cardboard.
• Once the power supply is restored, check on your freezer contents. If food has been completely thawed, it should not be frozen again. If food has an unpleasant smell or has discoloured, throw it out.

Water to your ice maker usually reaches it through a ½ centimetre line that connects to a close by pipe to the back of the fridge. The pipe is often located under the sink or in the basement.

Make the following checks for a faulty ice maker.

• If your ice maker has stopped producing ice, make sure that the stop arm controlling the on/off switch is in the down position and the water valve is open.
• Are your ice cubes your unit makes hollow in the centre? This means they are not getting sufficient water. If the ice bin contains water, chances are they are getting too much water. To fix this, turn the water supply screw a half-turn at a time to alter the flow of water. Don't go beyond more than 1 1⁄2 turns in either direction.
• If these adjustments don't work, call in an expert.

These tips for taking care of your freezer and frozen food will help you keep on top of issues and make your appliance work at its best for you.