Mrs AusCan and I just bought an upright deep freeze and transferred the contents of the old chest style freezer. Down in the bottom depths were food products deposited there sometime during the Pleistocene Era. These frozen moments of time were either forgotten, too hard to reach or just not worth the effort of removing the top layers of permafrosted peas.
Upright freezers are good in that you have much better access to the contents but, are inefficient because every time you open the door, all that nice cold air comes tumbling out. Chest freezers are better in that sense, however over time you end up only using the top 10 inches of the volume and the remainder becomes reminiscent of the frozen Aztec mummies' stomach contents.
The solution is to re-design the chest freezer with wire mesh trays which lift up when the counter-balanced lid is lifted. The cold air tends to drain back into the freezer compartment but you still have visual and manual access to your frozen goodies. The end product has a similar design mechanism as multi-trayed tackle boxes. [link]-- AusCan531, Feb 02 2014 3 Tray tacklebox http://i.imgur.com/tNgWJgZ.jpgIn the freezer, the trays need to be the usual plastic coated wire mesh. [AusCan531, Feb 02 2014] Cool! Have you given any thought as to how the hinges keep from freezing up?-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Feb 02 2014 [+] but you do realize that air has less than 1/1000th the heat capacity of ice, ie: there's not that much coolth lost as long as you're in and out quickly.-- FlyingToaster, Feb 02 2014 // how the hinges keep from freezing up? //
Easy. The mechanism is electrically powered. Every hour, the lid is cranked open and the racks raised, then lowered again, thus ensuring that the hinges never sieze.-- 8th of 7, Feb 02 2014 Better to have the hinges electrically heated, shirley?-- pocmloc, Feb 02 2014 Naw, that's no good. You'd just get any excess moisture forming ice stalagmites in an arc beneath the hinges or building an even harder coat of ice after the lid is shut. hmmm-- 2 fries shy of a happy meal, Feb 03 2014 I'd put the heavy, load lifting hinges in the outside and loose fitting, non-jamming hinges for the trays on the inside. Basically loops and hooks made out of the usual plastic coated wire found in freezer racks, although maybe a bit heavier duty.-- AusCan531, Feb 03 2014 Is there not a way to force the ice on the hinges to sublime and condense elsewhere in the freezer?-- pocmloc, Feb 03 2014 I like that the title helped me to visualize the idea. [+]-- xandram, Feb 03 2014 How about a large crank on the side of the freezer, which cycles the racks in a carousel-type arrangement. Rotate while the lid is shut, then the foodstuff you're looking for is on the top shelf when you open it.
Alternatively the wire mesh could sit on top of a large spring, wound by the crank in a jack-in-the-box type arrangement, which then violently ejects the entire contents over unsuspecting consumers.-- mitxela, Feb 04 2014 // cycles the racks in a carousel-type arrangement //
There are display cases for jewelry etc. that work just like that. Bakeable.-- 8th of 7, Feb 04 2014 //Bakeable.//
As is the giant jack-in-the-box idea.-- mitxela, Feb 04 2014 // but you do realize that air has less than 1/1000th the heat capacity of ice // It seems to me that the bigger advantage of a chest type might be that every time the air is exchanged, in a vertical style, the new air brings in more moisture to condense, requiring more frequent defrosting.-- scad mientist, Feb 04 2014 random, halfbakery