First post here and thank you everyone for such a useful forum for anything related to camping.
QUESTION: What PASSIVE cool box do you recommend for ~5day camping trips?
We currently have the typical and basic £12, 24-30L? cool box that I filled a piece of Styrofoam on to its hollow lid.
What we usually do is take 5-6 medium blue freeze blocks, frozen 4pt milk carton (water inside, not milk) and swap out (if a campsite has the facility) or top up with new bag of ice. Usually this gives us 3-5camping days with chilled cool box.
I understand the usual cool box tricks of pre-chilling, 3:1 ratio, freeze as many food as practically possible, wet tea towel barrier, keep in shades, etc.
I would like to ask what would be the common upgrade options from here for typical family camping for up to 5 days (at a site with facilities convenient for young family).
Some considerations are:
- Larger volume could be ideal as kids are eating more (maybe 45-50L?)
- Happy to keep swap ice blocks / top up with bag of ice cubes but prefer a bit more insulated container.
- Not interested in the fan (thermoelectric?) cool box or compressor.
- What would get us for a stab-in-the-dark budget of £100?
I understand YETI is the big dog in the world of passive cool box, but it's an overkill for our use. We'll never go "off-grid" so we'll always have access to at least basic facility at a site or got to a shop nearby.
Coleman, Igloo, next level generic box and which model?
take 2 cool boxes, one with frozen meals in them, the other with chill stuff, and frozen milk. only go in the frozen one once a day, to remove that nights frozen meal, and while its defrosting its put into the chill box, to bring the temp back down again. the main thing tho is to keep them out of a hot tent and move following the shadows
We had the Coleman Xtreme before we went with an electric fridge... and had great success with it... using that pre-cooling approach, and adding frozen water bottles.
I think ours was the largest model without wheels. Pretty sure it was 48L(?).
Looking now, it looks like they've changed to a darker blue colour. No idea whether their specifications have changed/been improved.
They do take up a lot of car space, but we budgeted for that by getting a 7 seater for the two of us!
... Also, if you have absolutely nothing better to do for the next 30 minutes or so, you could always check out this highly scientific study which proved most educational a few years back...
Yes, Coleman Xtreme, great bit of kid. Packed mine with beer on Wednesday for the weekend camping at Thruxton last weekend, still drinking cold beer on Sunday evening! 👍
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Topic: Cool box upgrade advice please
via mobile 17/8/2024 at 3:13pm
