Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Refrigerator/freezer for unheated garage?

Your bread doesn't freeze at 22 degrees?

Yes. One has to revert to the old technology (simple thermostat) for proper functioning in cold environments. All the new motherboard controlled crap is useless.

Find some 1950's brand that's still working, and one should be fine.

The easy fix to this is bypass the door switch so your light stays creating heat. I put a 15w incandescent bulb in mine and it works great. When spring rolls around put normal bulbs in and wire the switch back in

The problem is there has been a refrigerant change that gets thick when cold. It can knock the compressor out fairly quickly in a cold environment. The solution is to add a heater kit or buy a unit that is already garage ready.

They make some kind of heated stick on pad to fool your fridge if its in an unconditioned space. Only reason i know is i saw it on the internet.and everything on the internet is true!

I don't believe that's the problem on mine. It will not try to run, you cannot turn the thermostat down far enough to make it kick on. By-pass the thermostat by bugging the thermostat wires together and it will run and cool fine. Maybe the thermostat board has a built in safety that wont let it kick on, don't know, but it works fine if I by-pass the thermostat when it's cold in the garage.

My garage fridge has beer in the fridge and all the ground venison from last season in the fridge.
Beer is cold summer and winter, deer meat hasn’t thawed.
Old fridge we took out of a remodel.

I thought I was the only one that liked warm soda.

I had a Kenmore upright freezer in an unheated utility room for 30 years. Gave to son and have an Amana upright. No problems ever. Kenmore still running.

My chest freezer and my refrigerator/freezer work fine in my garage. I’m in west Michigan north of Grand Rapids and we have some cold days in the winter and pretty warm days in the summer. I do have some buddies that have done some kind of fix to their beer fridges so they work in the winter and it’s a common enough fix that I know there’s a work around if your unit has issues.