Looking at a free chest freezer

My neighbor just sent me a message saying there is a chest freezer at his work that he is going to try to get for me. I guess some one through a dead animal in there and it is now mush (freezer hasnt been plugged in for a while....). He said it also smells like racoon piss. Anyone have any tips on cleaning this thing out so it doesn't smell bad, or should I just ignore the free price tag and pass on it??

joenads said:

My neighbor just sent me a message saying there is a chest freezer at his work that he is going to try to get for me. I guess some one through a dead animal in there and it is now mush (freezer hasnt been plugged in for a while....). He said it also smells like racoon piss. Anyone have any tips on cleaning this thing out so it doesn't smell bad, or should I just ignore the free price tag and pass on it??

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Ya, I don't know about this. Honestly I would pass on it and look for one on CL or something. If you want to try it use some diluted bleach and scrub the heck out of it!

first, have him plug it in and see if it even gets cold - he can put his hand on the inside wall near the top and tell within 3 minutes.

I don't know about dead racoons, but the smell of a dead hooker will NEVER come out of a chest freezer.

the_bird said:

i don't know about dead racoons, but the smell of a dead hooker will never come out of a chest freezer.

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+1

Freezing the dead animal first will definitely help in the cleanup. Heck yes, I'd take it.

Yes, lots and lots of diluted bleach in a spray bottle should eventually get the nastiness out.

It would also be a good idea to remove the plastic lid liner, toss out all of the old insulation and re-insulate it with some fresh stuff.

Free is good. If you can't get the smell out of it all you have to do is put it out on the curb and the scrap metal scavengers will come and get it.

There is nothing to lose. Go for it.

yeah, i plan to pick it up this evening. figured if it doesnt come out, ill toss it. ive already got everything else (taps, kegs, CO2, lines...) to build my keezer, i had just been waiting for a decently priced chest freezer to come along...

Everything I have read says that odors that sit in a fridge or freezer for extended time will not come out of it...having said that, I would still try to clean it. Worst case scenario you just dump it on the curb as said before.

Yeah, I think it comes down to how easily you can get rid of it if you fail. I would make sure that it works before lugging it home, though.

The smell will never come out. I took one a friend had that got unplugged and all the meat went bad. I tried for months. I used bleach filled it full of water and and about 6 gallons of the bleach. it smelled good till it started to get cold and I closed the lid. Then I tried vinegar, then i tried baking soda past, then I tried vinegar and baking sods. What a mess. then I left it in the sun for a couple of weeks with the lid off. Every time it smelled god until I plugged it in and it got cold then when the lid was opened it would knock you over. IMHO I would let it go to the dump, but give it a try if you want..

any way these can be torn apart and i could just use the guts? build my own airtight cabinet with some spray foam and plastic??

If "juice" leaked through to the syrofoam insulation you may never get the smell out, but you may be able to take the aluminum out and then remove the insulation and replace it.

My fermentations fridge had rotten fish in the insulation in the freezer compartment. The smell was horrid. When I removed the insulation the smell went away.

BUT...The freezer you are getting may just need to be cleaned up and the smell will go away.

It's still a no lose proposition to pick it up and check it out.

I would check to make sure I could dispose of it for free if it does not work out. Lots of municipalities have a fee for disposing of appliances that contain a refrigerant.

If Summerville is anything like this area, there are numerous adds on craigslist of people looking for broken appliances to sell as scrap. They'll pick old appliances up for free.

It kind of pisses me off. All the old fridges and freezers that might have been snatched up for free and turned into keezers or kegerators are being scrapped...

well, i picked it up last night. its a 13 cubic ft and its currently sitting outside on the back porch. i gave it a quick spray of dilluted bleach and let that sit for 2 hours. the i sprayed again and scrubbed with a brush. some of the paint on the inside starded pealing off the metal, so i think if i remove all the paint, that might help. i gave one more spray of bleach after scrubbing and closed the lid for the night. openned it up this morning and there was still a funk, but not as bad. i didnt expect it to clean up over night, but just wanted to give a progress up date.

I feel like all that cleaning effort would not be worth the $20-30 it would cost to find a clean used freezer.

joenads said:

well, i picked it up last night. its a 13 cubic ft and its currently sitting outside on the back porch. i gave it a quick spray of dilluted bleach and let that sit for 2 hours. the i sprayed again and scrubbed with a brush. some of the paint on the inside starded pealing off the metal, so i think if i remove all the paint, that might help. i gave one more spray of bleach after scrubbing and closed the lid for the night. openned it up this morning and there was still a funk, but not as bad. i didnt expect it to clean up over night, but just wanted to give a progress up date.

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Keep trying, you never know. A couple days of scrubbing could do it.

Clean it up as best you can, replace the insulation in the lid, and if all else fails, rattlecan the interior with some gloss paint.

ryan_george said:

I feel like all that cleaning effort would not be worth the $20-30 it would cost to find a clean used freezer.

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20-30 for a used freezer, I wish, my area its more like 100-125 I got lucky with one for 75

ryan_george said:

I feel like all that cleaning effort would not be worth the $20-30 it would cost to find a clean used freezer.

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Freezers must be cheap in Ontario.

The best I've found are around a hundred bucks, and they go fast

yeah, i passed up a 16 cubic foot that was going for $175. no regrets yet...

Call your local rental center and see if you can rent an "ozone generator"

More info HERE...

Makes it a little less free, but it should work.

Just don't breathe to much of it in high concentrations...

woah, ozone generator just sounds like another good diy project...

joenads said:

woah, ozone generator just sounds like another good diy project...

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Certainly doable, but I bought a used Pro-4 unit off ebay to deal with a recently discovered mold problem in the nether regions of my basement.

I ran it in that area for about 6 hours today while at work to test it. While probably not long enough to kill the mold it did significantly reduce the cigar odor in my garage, which is actually somewhat closed off from the moldy area.

Just need to be careful with it.

joenads -
did you ever plug it in? are you cleaning a freezer or an insulated box?

i have not plugged it yet, as it has been tipped on its side a few times now. my neighbor said it was running fine before they unplugged it at his work a few months ago. ill plug it in after work today and see if gets a bit cold. then i think im just going to spray it with paint stripper and get the inside to bare metal, give the few rust spots a hit with CLR and maybe paint it after that and hope for the best.

i am going to try and take out the insulation in the lid too

Update?

picked up an ozone generator off craigslist for $20 and just been using that for a few hours for a couple days. definitely seems to be working but there is still a little funk. it’s actually tolerable now though. i plan to use some spray rust reformer from rust-oleum to cover the bottom, so i will probably have to use the ozone generator some more to get rid of the aerosol smell...

aerosol smell is better than rotting flesh smell, any day!
I had an ice chest once that some meat spoiled in for about a week. No matter what I tried though, I couldn't get rid of that smell. I tried bleach, vinegar, charcoal (to absorb it), leaving it in the sun for a long time, painting and sealing the inside. I eventually just tossed it.
I hope your results are better than mine!

I definitely agree with the notion to remove\replace the insulation in the lid and strip the paint though. I think the smell permeates plastics and porous material more so than metal.

just an update as the smell the chest freezer came with is almost un noticable. I got an old corny keg from one of the local micros that was full of beer (some stout that was made over a year ago but the party they took it to didnt have the ball lock attachments) and I put it in the freezer to get it out of the way. I hooked up a picnic tap to see if the beer was still good, which it was, but when i removed the picnic tap, the post seemed to leak a small amount. this resulted in having a bit of sticky stout at the bottome of the freezer, but it smells much better. I have started the construction of my coffin keezer, but am horrible to document the progress. i will post a final picture eventually...as of this weekend, though, the chest freezer once again stinks. its not a bad thing this time as I am fermenting my first lager in there "(rhino farts!). It was one hell of a brew day though that can be seen here: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/broken-carboy-club-314087/

Congrats on the great score and success in cleaning it up! Make sure to post a picture of the finished keezer.

I had to scrub my kegerator down with baking soda and H2O

well, seems as though the freezer crapped out on me. was holding steady for the lager at about 48 F. over the last 2 days it slowly rose to about 58 F. I don't know what to do about lagering my lager now... I have an idea to take the garage fridge (cheap craigslist buy, but the refridgerator, which is fed from the freezer, doesnt get very cool) and harvest the freezer coils and put that into the chest freezer since I know that freezes. I think my first lager is going to be ruined though...

I successfully gutted my garage fridge for the freezer components. It was not an easy process, by I got thru it. The worst part was the "yoder loop" and I didn't know about it until i started following the condensor lines through the front of the fridge and aroudn the freezer. I did end up picking up an angle grinder, so I got a new tool out of it. My chest freezer is now sitting at a cool 35 degrees allowing my oktoberfest to lager!

Well, I finally got my keezer going. I've got 2 lines running right now. I still have to hook up the other 2, find a drip tray, and button up the back.

Nice!

All that from a freezer that had a dead raccoon stored in it. Awesome. Good job.