Fascinating poston the science of cooling... I solve the floating bacon by putting food in sealable plastic containers, bubblewrap on top of everything then the lettuce or whatever sitting on the top. OH fancies an electric fridge now but I quite enjoy the simplicity of the coolbox, although ours is a bit of a beast.
Are Iceyteks worth the £££ compared to an Igloo Maxcold or my chunky Coleman Extreme?
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And this is why we ended up getting a 3 way fridge, so much easier and less hassle. We have a coleman icebox but such a nightmare keeping everything coool,replacing ice etc if you are doing a week or more.
Any food that goes in the coolbox i tend to pack in ziplock bags. Partly to remove surplus packaging to help me pack it, but it also also means it doesn't matter if they get wet.
For the ice, I normally use the frozen bottle of water method. Readily available (assuming you remember to make it up!). It also has the advantage that you can drink it if you want.
Drinks kill coolboxes. Partly the constant opening (I promise you someone will fail to put the lid back on properly as well), but also because as you drink them to tend to replace the chilled drinks with unchilled ones to cool down - this significantly increases the work the ice has to do. As a result of this, don't put your food and drinks in the same coolbox. Either use a seperate coolbox for drinks, or chill them in a stream. Use ice-cubes if you have to, but don't use your food coolbox for drinks.
Bigger coolboxes keep ice better than smaller ones, partly because they have a better ratio of surface-area to volume, partly because they just have more room for ice to start with.
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I’ve lined my 32L weekender cool box with a extra layer of polystyrene. I’ve made a triple thick cardboard lid which fits onto the top of the box and the space in the lid I’ve filled with polystyrene. I put a bin liner in to keep the lining dry. I freeze two 1.5l bottles and using empty ice cream containers I make large frozen ice blocks to almost completely fill the box leaving enough room to put a small bottle of milk, cheese ham and butter in. As the ice melts I empty the water out and add beer/food. The frozen bottles give us cold drinking water. It’s been really hot this week and five days later I still have ice and really cold beer.
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Topic: Top tips for non electric cool boxes
I solve the floating bacon by putting food in sealable plastic containers, bubblewrap on top of everything then the lettuce or whatever sitting on the top. OH fancies an electric fridge now but I quite enjoy the simplicity of the coolbox, although ours is a bit of a beast. 
via mobile 10/8/2022 at 6:33pm
