Power outages are no longer common nowadays, except maybe in some provinces. However, even if you are in the center of Metro Manila, it can still happen once in a while, especially during the rainy season when power companies cut off power for safety reasons during a typhoon or heavy rain. Your major concern during a power outage, or what we locally refer to as “brownout,” might be the lights, as it is difficult to see in the dark. Another concern would be ventilation, as it can be uncomfortable without proper fans or an air conditioning unit in your home. How about your refrigerator or freezer? Not many people pay much attention to them during a brownout, but they should for health safety.
What to Do to Your Refrigerator or Freezer during a Power Outage
Your refrigerator and freezer keep your food and drinks fresh and safe to consume, but they need electricity to do their job. So what do you do with them during a power outage? Here are some tips.
- Keep the doors closed.
How to keep the fridge cold without power? Keeping the door closed helps maintain the cold temperature in your refrigerator. Constantly opening it releases the cold air inside, so be sure to avoid it.
- Use block or dry ice.
If you have important perishable items that need to remain cold, like food for your baby or medicines, but you are not sure until when the brownout will be, head out to a nearby store and buy a block or dry ice. Place the ice inside the refrigerator or freezer to keep the temperature even longer. If you have a small cooler, you can also transfer the most perishable items there and fill the cooler with ice so you can preserve them longer.
- Monitor the temperature.
Leave a thermometer in the middle part of your refrigerator or freezer so you can check its temperature after a few hours or once the power returns. This is crucial as food, especially perishable ones, needs to be stored at a certain temperature to be safe for consumption.
How long can food stay in a refrigerator or freezer without power?
How long can a fridge go without power? With the power cut off, a refrigerator can still keep food inside cold for about 4 hours as long as it remains unopened. Meanwhile, a refrigerator freezer can remain cold for about 48 hours if it is full. If the power is out for 24 hours, a refrigerator freezer that is half full can still keep food safe to consume as long as you keep its door closed.
You can still eat and cook food from a refrigerator or freezer without power as long as they are within the time frame mentioned above. However, for meat and poultry products, you have to make sure that they are cooked thoroughly so that all harmful microorganisms are killed.
If the temperature inside the ref or freezer has reached more than 40 degrees Fahrenheit or 18 degrees Celsius for 2 hours or more, it may no longer be safe to consume the food inside.
What to do once the power resumes
Once the power returns, you have to evaluate whether food is still safe to consume. Here are things you can do.
- Check the temperature. If your refrigerator can tell the temperature, check if it is below 40 degrees Fahrenheit. If so, the food inside it is still safe for consumption.
- If you don’t have a thermometer, you can use frost as a sign. If frozen food still has frost or ice crystals, it can be refrozen and consumed. If frozen food has been completely thawed, it is safer not to consume it.
- If unsure whether the food items have spoiled or not because of the brownout; just throw them away. Better safe than sorry.
When to Call For a Refrigerator Technician
If the freezer power outage is caused by a strong typhoon, and a flood has entered your home and submerged your fridge partially or fully, then it is best to not use it until a professional has checked it and deemed it safe to use again. If flooding has not affected it, then your ref is still most likely in great condition.
Keeping food still safe to consume during a power outage is crucial, especially if you are running a business at home where a power generator is not readily available to keep the electricity running. In such cases, a reliable refrigerator would be your ideal partner, like the Condura Negosyo Inverter Pro Two Door Refrigerator. This refrigerator has a Negosyo Inverter Compressor that allows you to enjoy savings on electricity with 2x faster freezing. It has an Aluminum Freezer that provides an even and more efficient cooling performance from the 4 sides of the freezer. It maintains the cold temperature of the freezer thanks to its Aluminum Roll Bond Freezer. Also, because it is a manual defrost refrigerator, the frost buildup can serve as a cooling buffer in case of power outages.
Being a Filipino brand, Condura knows the Filipinos’ unique needs. That’s why it provides top-notch home solutions for the Filipino family. If you want to know more about our offerings, you can check our website, and once you are ready, you can buy directly from our online stores (Condura e-store, Lazada Flagship Store, and Shopee Mall) or from our dealer partners’ online stores and physical stores.
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Photo by Kristina Paukshtite from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/salad-dish-1591226/
