[Herb]

Apologies if this is the wrong section, not sure if it should be here or the preserving section.

I am planning on buying a new small chest freezer, specifically for storing our harvested fruit and veg.

Is there anything in particular I should look out for? Or are they all really the same?

cheers,

Herb

[grinling]

Think or space taking up, whether chest or normal freezer would be better, capacity, reaching to the bottom, defrosting and cleaning (mine has a plug hole) and depending on where it is going the temperatures the freezer copes at (unheated garage/shed/heated/unheated room.
Look at review sites and can you get it into the house.

[Gwiz]

It's surprising how small even the biggest freezer is once you start filling it up with home-grown

[JayG]

I'll second Grinling's point about making sure the freezer you choose will operate in the location you intend to use it - my fridge-freezer will only operate "normally" in an ambient  temperature of 14C+ (any lower and you need to press the "fast-freeze" button which effectively means it's running all the time - chest freezers may well be different but it's worth checking.)

[Trillium]

I'm with Gwiz. Don't buy one that's 'just the right size' because once you start freezing stuff, you'll kick yourself for not getting a larger one in the first place. There's so much you can freeze like butter, cheeses, bread, fruit, sauces, herbs, milk. I buy cartons of egg whites and freeze them as well as we're very far from the source.

A large enough freezer quickly pays for itself by saving many trips to the shops (think: fuel)

[Kleftiwallah]

Upright freezers have come a long way from the time you opened the door and felt all that expensive cold air wrapping around your feet!

Cheers,   Tony.

[mumofstig]

I always think that upright freezers lose an awful lot of space around the drawers which you can never seem to fill to capacity without them jamming 

I have a fridge/freezer and a small chest freezer which gets turned off when I finally run out of frozen harvested veg, probably in a week or 2 Then it gets a good clean out ready for the next lot 

[Herb]

Thanks for that everyone.

It is going in a small unheated cupboard room - it probably never gets warmer than 15C over winter, so I'll have to look into that.

Space will be a premium, which is why I'm looking at a chest freezer rather than an upright, there would be too much wasted space with the drawers etc.

This might work with the space I've got.

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/haier-bd103gaa-chest-freezer-white-12355933-pdt.html

[mumofstig]

I got this one from there(daughter sets discount  ) 5 years ago 

http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/norfrost-c4aewc-chest-freezer-white-12371884-pdt.html

[GrannieAnnie]

It's surprising how small even the biggest freezer is once you start filling it up with home-grown

I agree, we have 4 now.  3 chest freezers and an under counter upright.  The smallest chest one is turned off at the moment, but will be back on mid March ready for the pork!

Chest freezers are supposed to use less electricity, but are harder to find stuff at the bottom than an upright.