I have had a this stand up freezer right about 5 years and since I have had it the sides get very hot. The temp. remains around 0 to 10 degrees on setting one. And every 4 to 5 months the freezer will quit working for a couple of hours and just start working again after I pull the plug for a minute and plug it back in. It sits in a garage in south Louisiana during the summer and winter months. It has done this in the summer time and in the middle of winter. We have lost power a couple of times and had to hook it up by itself to a generator (the generator is powerful enough to run this and a fridge but I prefer to run one at a time).