Do you have an older chest freezer in your garage or basement? If so, you might want to know how much more it's costing you and how much you can save with an upgrade.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has an easy-to-use calculator that can help you find out how much your freezer costs to run and how much you can save by switching to a new, energy-efficient model. Just select your type of unit (chest freezer or standup refrigerator/freezer), size and model year. You'll get estimated one-year and five-year operating costs.

The cold facts about freezers:

• There are 38 million separate freezers in use in the U.S., according to the EPA, and more than 17 million of them are at least 10-years old.
• Chest freezers are more efficient than upright, front-loading freezers.
• Manual defrost freezers use half the energy of automatic defrost models, but must be defrosted periodically to achieve the energy savings.
• The refrigerant in a freezer won't work properly if the unit is installed in a garage or other space where the temperature often fall below 45°F.

What you should do

Your best bet is to get rid of your old freezer. You probably don't need it. If you do want the extra freezer space and your unit is 10-years old or older, upgrade to an ENERGY STAR®-certified model. ENERGY STAR freezers are at least 10% more efficient than standard units.