Any advice? Have any of you recovered the hundreds of dollars lost due to power company outages spoiling your fridge?
I had frozen food mostly survive after 3 days without doing this.
https://extension.umn.edu/preserving-and-preparing/power-out...
The tl;dr:
• Having a fridge thermometer & a freezer thermometer are good.
• A full freezer, kept closed, can hold temperature for ≤48 hours. A half-full freezer, ≤24 hours. Fill your freezer. Ice (to fill up empty space) is your friend. You can make it, or buy it from the store.
• The fridge part, kept closed, can hold temperatures for ≤4 hours. Block ice can help extend that time. A fridge thermometer can be used (after power is back) to check if the temperature exceeded 40° F.
Block ice? It's exactly that, ice in the form of a large block. https://elitecooler.com/blogs/news/cooler-use-get-the-best-i... has more info on using it for keeping things cool.
https://www.kqed.org/news/11944877/power-outages-claim-lost-...
https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/california/pge-clai...
https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/pge-compensation-pa...
If you have enough advance notice, you can buy or rent a generator with enough capacity to keep the fridge alive. Place any gasoline generator outside the house! And DO NOT connect it to the home power lines. Only to the fridge (unplug it from the wall and plug it into the generator)
I live in the Sierra foothills and had a Generac installed, that runs off the home propane supply. It has run for a week during fire and storm emergencies.
I don't have the calculations at hand, but it may or may not be the case that a big battery and inverter could do the same job. Hardware stores (here) have all kinds of generators the size you need. Renting might be wise.
I just hate wasting food.
Good luck.
9 hours isn’t too bad though. if you keep the door closed the whole time you’ll probably survive