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List Price: $34.99
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We bought this alarm because we have young kids who love to be independent and help out by getting their own ice and food. Since our indoor freezer is a bottom pull-out, they can get into it easily. We also have an upright freezer in the garage. We had one week where a freezer was left open three times. This alarm has helped tremendously.
We are using both sensors in the two freezers. They come pre-programmed with min/max settings, one for the refrigerator and one for the freezer. It is very simple to change those settings though and the directions were clear.
I really like that it has a fifteen-minute delay before the alarm sounds. That is, the temperature has to be above the set point for 15 minutes before the alarm is triggered. That feature prevents false alarms when a 3-year old is having trouble deciding which ice cube is the perfect one for his juice.
I wish I had known that for freezer use you need to use lithium batteries (AA) as they work at lower temperatures versus alkaline. We didn't have any on hand and so had to wait to install the units. Extra trips to the store are a pain and I would have just ordered 4 (2 for ea) when I bought the unit if I had known.
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Purchased to monitor 2 freezers that are 60 feet apart. Though the manufacturer says that the display can be as far as 100 feet from the sensors I find that with intervening walls and doors the distance is reduced to about 40 feet. Found a convenient location half-way between both freezers and all works well. A great temperature monitoring system that can be used to monitor 2 freezers, 2 refrigerators or 1 of each.
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After having one of our refrigerators freeze up and go out on us recently, we had water all over the floor and we lost quite a bit of food products. As we do not spend much time in the area where this refrigerator is, we had no idea it had gone out for quite some time. After purchasing a new refrigerator/freezer, we didn't want to take the chance of another disaster like this, so we searched for a thermometer and alarm system that would allow for an external display with separate internal temperature sensors for the refrigerator and freezer compartments. Every site we checked pointed to the Chaney 00985 Wireless Refrigerator Freezer Thermometer, so we eagerly ordered one. We also picked up a 4-pack of Lithium AA batteries to power the remote sensors.
Setup instructions for the Chaney 00985 thermometer are very simple and easy to follow. I had the batteries installed, and the sensors in place in less than 10 minutes. We decided to utilize the magnetic mounting of the receiver, and stuck it directly to the outside of the refrigerator door. Within a couple of minutes, the freezer sensor registered with the receiver, showing a temperature of 58°F. I knew the freezer was no higher than zero degrees, but I figured it would likely take several minutes for the sensor to adjust to the drastic temperature change. Ten minutes later I checked again and the freezer was still showing 58°F and the refrigerator sensor still hadn't registered with the receiver. After waiting an hour, the freezer temp showed 52°F and the refrigerator finally registered but showed a temp of 67°F. WOW, how crazy is that? I removed the batteries and started over. This time both sensors registered within the first 10 minutes, but after an hour they were still showing in the 50s and 60s.
Over the course of several hours we changed the location of the receiver and sensors, and I even went out and purchased a new set of batteries (at nearly $10.00 for a 4-pack of lithium AAs). Many times the sensors wouldn't register with the receiver at all, unless I had them extremely close together (I'm talking within one foot of each other). The only way I could get this product to work is if I took the remote sensors out of the refrigerator and freezer compartments and placed them right next to the receiver. I am not exaggerating at all here folks, the sensors had to be literally within inches of the receiver in order to register and provide fairly accurate temperature readings. It eventually became clear to me that this product will not work at all with the sensors in the refrigerator and freezer compartments at all. Isn't this supposed to be the whole purpose of this product, to measure the internal temperatures of a refrigerator and freezer?
I don't know if our new refrigerator/freezer came with some sort of doors that the signal could not penetrate, but obviously this product would not work for us and I feel that the wireless signal they use is extremely poor. Amazon was great about letting me return this device, but now my wife and I cannot find any other wireless device to replace it with. There are a couple of others on the market, but they receive rather poor ratings as well and we are afraid to take a chance on them. I really, REALLY wanted to like the Chaney 00985 Wireless Refrigerator Freezer Thermometer. It looks awesome and the features of this product are exactly what we have been looking for. However, this device is obviously made of extremely poor quality, and I recommend that anyone who decides to purchase this product should keep the packaging and receipt handy, as it is likely you will end up needing to return it. I would gladly pay three times as much for this product if it would work reliably. In the meantime, if anyone knows of a product like this that is proven to work well, please let me know. Thank you.
Honest reviews on Chaney Instrument 00985 Wireless Refrigerator Freezer Thermometer
Given the mixed reviews of this product, I was pretty hesitant to order it. However, there weren't a lot of alternatives so I thought I'd go ahead and try it. I'm happy to say that it works just fine and I'm actually quite happy with it.
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SET-UP
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The set-up was easy. I put the AA-Lithium batteries in the sensors first, and then the AAA-Lithium batteries into the base and within 1 minute it had registered both sensors and started working.
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ACCURACY
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This was my biggest concern given some of the other comments. However, with both sensors side by side on a table, they both read within 1 degree of each other, and both matched my external room thermometer. Good enough for me!
Then I placed them in my fridge and freezer. They took about 15 minutes to acclamatize and then started reading exactly the same as the readouts built in to the fridge.
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RANGE
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This was the key point for me. I needed something that was going to have range, as I don't want to have the main base attached to the outside of the door.
With the base attached to the door, no problem they worked fine.
With the base 20ft away and in the next room also worked great.
When I moved one of the sensors out of the freezer and into a room down the hall (about 35ft away) it stopped registering that one, but still read the other in the fridge (20ft away) I suspect the multiple walls were blocking the signal.
The one negative I would say about this, is that unlike the Orgagon Scientific thermometers I've used, this base unit provides no indication that it has lost contact with the sensor. I'd suggest that if it doesn't get an update within 2 minutes, it should show that on the screen somehow. Instead, this unit just keeps showing the last known temp -not very helpful.
Also, once it has lost it's connection, it seems that you have to remove the batteries or hit the paperclip sized reset button on the main base to re-initiate the connection.
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ALARMS
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Dead simple to set and exactly what I needed.
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BATTERIES
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I saw somebody else complained in a review that you have to use expensive lithium batteries in the sensors. That's a little silly isn't it? It's hardly the manufacturers fault that alkaline batteries would freeze in the freezer and not function.
My only complaint (and admitedly it's also a bit dumb) is that Amazon shipped the batteries in a separate box and 2 days later than the actual thermometers, so I had it sitting here for two days while I wanted to try it. See, told you it was dumb.
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In closing, I think this is a good product. It seems well constructed. The mounting options of suction cups or spring clips on the sensors and wall hanging or magnets on the base are appreciated.
The only things that would make this a 5 star in my opinion are:
indicate when you've lost a signal
make the base available in silver and/or black
sell as a bundle with your first set of lithium batteries included.
I'm now going to take it out to my RV where I really need it. I will edit this if I have any future problems.
I'd buy it again...
Jay.
Find helpful customer reviews and review ratings for Chaney Instrument 00985 Wireless Refrigerator Freezer Thermometer
I am a wine writer and also a low carb writer. For both of the websites I run I get bombarded with questions from readers who want to know how to keep their wines and foods fresh for as long as possible. We are all trying to save money in these times, and keeping your food and drink fresh until you finish eating it is certainly an obvious way to help out. In almost every case, my guidance to the people is to test the temperature in their fridge and freezer. Many people are shocked to realize that their fridges are FAR too warm, and that is causing their food to spoil and their wine to sour.
The Chaney Refrigerator / Freezer Thermometer is a brilliant way to keep an eye on how your food is doing. Here is how it works. You get one thermometer which you put into the back of your refrigerator. A second thermometer goes into the back of your freezer. Both of these send signals *wirelessly* to a display unit. The display unit is magnetic and can stick easily to the front of your refrigerator.
You can walk by your fridge and see at a glance exactly what temperature your fridge and freezer are currently at. The system also displays the highest and lowest temperature each area has reached since you last reset the values. So if you set your fridge normally to 34F and you see that it has been swinging between 20F and 50F, it's time to call a repair person! That would definitely cause serious damage to your food.
In addition, you can set alarm values, both high and low, for both sensors. So you can set the freezer to start beeping an alarm if it drops below -50F, or if it goes up above 0F. Of course the chance of your freezer suddenly going insane and becoming "way too cold" is probably slim but I know a number of people who had electrical problems with their fridges and who lost cooling ability without realizing it at first. Having a beeping alarm go off before your freezer's contents all thaw is a very good thing!
The wireless unit says that it can transmit a fair distance, but this of course would depend on all sorts of things if there are concrete walls between the source and destination, if there are other interfering signals around, and so on. For me, I know it works with the display on the outside of the fridge it is monitoring. So I can say with great certainty that that works very well.
I know for sure the alarm works wonderfully only a few weeks after buying the unit, we had a thunderstorm take out the power. It was only a short while later when the fridge half of our unit began beeping.
Is there a downside to this? Well, when we first got the set, the display LEDs simply would not light up well. We tried at least 8 different sets of batteries in it to ensure it wasn't a bad set of batteries. Some of the number pieces would light up, while others would stay completely unlit. We called up Chaney and they were extremely prompt and helpful. Only a few days later we had a fully functional display unit in our hands, and it worked beautifully. Electronic devices will never be 100% foolproof so I don't ding them much for having that glitch, and offer praise for them resolving it so readily.
All in all, I love this device. I can glance at my fridge every time I use it and know exactly what its temperature is and what the recent ranges of temperature have been. I can optimize the fridge and freezer to have the optimal temperatures to keep my food and wine fresh for as long as possible. That means milk lasts longer, salad fixings last longer, everything lasts longer. That stretches my food dollar as well as it can be stretched, and easily pays for the price of the thermometer within a month or two.
Highly recommended. I'm even looking into getting another one for my wine fridges. The only question then would be if the wireless transmitters interfere with each other!
