Hi everyone, we are going camping in a few weeks without electric for the first time.
I was wondering what Passive coolbox can anyone recommend for 6 days away to keep things chilled for a family of 4?
We will be able to top up the freeze pack and get more ice.
We have a Coleman Extreme which I would recommend highly. I think it's this one: https://www.coleman.eu/uk/p-25998-xtreme-52qt.aspx. If you put frozen food into it it won't be fully thawed after 72 hours in my experience.
People also speak highly of Icey-Tek but I've no personal experience of them.
We've got the coleman too, buy 2kg of supermarket ice cubes slash the bag and drop them in it, then drain the water out every 2 days when you add 1kg of new ice cubes.
Fantastic things, better than compressor fridges in many ways 👍
Yep fleck2, I agree, my little 12lt £5 Tesco passive cool box, is great for keeping stuff chilled whilst I am out on the road at work each day, only really keep milk and yogurt’s in it to be fair, and a couple of ice pack (plastic blocks) keeps it going for a couple of days.
Having said that I would not be without my camping compressor fridge, for when we are down in the South of France during July.
Quote: Originally posted by fleck2 on 07/8/2020
We've got the coleman too, buy 2kg of supermarket ice cubes slash the bag and drop them in it, then drain the water out every 2 days when you add 1kg of new ice cubes.
Fantastic things, better than compressor fridges in many ways 👍
Totally agree, got an electric one and now gone back the coleman one.
A bit long winded, but copied and pasted from elsewhere...
Quote: Originally posted by Mucker1884 on 31/7/2020
The better the cool box, the better the results.
"Pre-freeze" the cool box at home. Load it with big frozen blocks (2L bottles of water, ideally). When they thaw/after 12 hours or so, replace them with fresh frozen bottles. These will now take much longer to thaw.
If need be, start this process 2 or 3 days before departure, so the last load almost struggle to thaw at all, due to the inside of the box being so cold.
Load up with as much cold stuff as possible. Consider pre-freezing drinks/milk etc that won't be needed for a day or so. Certainly consider loading stuff from the fridge. Avoid putting room temperature stuff in there, as it will simply try to warm up the inside of the box.
Any remaining space could be filled with freezer blocks and/or frozen 1L bottles of water. (Such a large block of ice will take longer to thaw than a freezer block, which in turn would last longer than ice cubes... but every little helps!)
Some cool boxes (Coleman Xtreme from experience) claim to keep things cold for 5 days. With the above approach, and of course keeping the opening and closing of the box lid to a minimum, I can vouch it really does work!
Also check out the camp site... quite a number offer freezers for the very reason of re-freezing ice packs etc.
Quote: Originally posted by Mucker1884 on 02/8/2020
If using loose ice cubes, Keep things “dry” with some sort of grid/raised base, or all in sealed containers. Don’t be overly tempted to drain away any thawed ice, as that one inch of nice cold water will just get replaced with warm/ambient air.
When we used a cool box we used to premake certain meals, Chillis Curry’s etc. And freeze them in take away food containers. They used to stay frozen for days. Another tip is put a blanket over the box and keep it in the shade if poss
We now have a proper compressor CF50 and it’s awsome. You can be in the south of France and a hour later be having a bottle of chilled wine.
If anything I would say our xtreme is far better than a halfords etc peltier type box (we have both) - it can be very difficult,however, to get newbies to understand that a plain passive coolbox is actually worth the money compared with one you can get for the same price that plugs in!!!
The passive are good because they cool so powerfully and quickly, you put 2kg of ice cubes in there and it's instantly 1°c and stays there until the ice has all melted, even after that it only warms up slowly.
Compare that to the peltier ones that have a weak cheap cooling module in there that needs 5 amps at 12v to work, and then take an hour or two to drop the temperature down. I suppose you could put ice in as well to help them out if there is a drain, I don't think the blue blocks work as well as cubes.
We bought a little 10L passive box from the local Chinese shop here in Benidorm yesterday, €9.95 Bobby dazzler, €0.69 worth of ice from Lidl and cold beer instantly... Nearly ❄️🍺😁
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Topic: Passive Coolbox
via mobile 07/8/2020 at 10:18am
