to defrost freezer quickly

[darkoshi]

Such as the small freezer compartments in the mini refrigerators often found in motels...
(It was so full of ice that the little freezer flap wouldn't even open more than part-way, because of ice on the hinge area.)

First I tried chipping away at some of the ice with a screwdriver. That didn't work well.

I thought of using the motel room's hair-dryer, but it was mounted to the wall and the cord didn't reach far enough.

I looked up the refrigerator model's manual online. It said NOT to try to chip away the ice as that could cause damage. It said NOT to use a hair-dryer as that could deform the plastic parts. It said to turn the refrigerator off and wait for it to melt. With a warm bowl of water inside to speed things along. But that would have still taken too long.

I tried tossing teaspoonfuls of warm water onto the ice at the top of the hinge, but that didn't work well.

So then I ran hot water on a washcloth and used the warm washcloth to melt the ice, with a towel at the bottom of the fridge to catch dripping water. I wrung out the washcloth over the sink and repeated it many times. Once I got the flap to open all the way, I continued melting away much of the frost and the ice inside the freezer compartment. Using a small hand-towel would have worked well too, maybe even faster.

Comments

[frith]

What I do is use a space heater, one of those 1500 Watts doohickeys that plug into the wall and blow hot air. I have it facing the (unplugged) fridge with something jammed into the freezer door part to keep the freezer open. The ice will melt within three hours or so. (Unless you forget to unplug the fridge. Been there did that. It was a GFCI plug, I thought I had turned it off. Hahaha. Nope.) Anyway, spaceheater, two feet away, ain't gonna melt nothing. Gotta be pressed up against the fridge for it to melt stuff, and even then space heater usually has a safety turn-off mechanism. Takes all the fun out of fire risk.

[darkoshi]

Surely the kind that blows hot air doesn't have to be pressed right up against it? My space heaters are the non-air-blowing radiator kind, and I can imagine that they would need to be right next to the open fridge to have an effect.

But still, if one doesn't have such a heater, or can't wait 3 hours, the hot water washcloth works quite well and quickly, though requiring more manual effort.

[frith]

Well, the heater just needs to face the fridge. To see how hot it gets if your portable heater is close to the fridge, put a thermometer on the part of the fridge closest to the heater. If the temperature there goes up to 30°C (86°F), it won't hurt the plastic.

I also have another portable heater that lights up and doesn't blow. One time I was using it to keep my bread machine warm (so the dough would rise) and somehow it got pressed up against the bread machine, melting the plastic. So, yeah, you gotta mind the gap.