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12v Cool boxes - recommendations?


Jennifer McM

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55 minutes ago, TheBiscuits said:

All is explained.  It's Staines folk with delusions of grandeur.

 

Englefield Green is better ?

 

The first house I ever tried to buy was a three bed Victorian terrace in Englefield Green. Couldn't get ANY building society to lend on it as they all said it wouldn't hold its value. It was £6k, and we had £800 deposit. 

 

Still rankles.... 

 

Prolly worth about £1/2mil now. 

 

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9 hours ago, Jennifer McM said:

I've got a fridge/freezer, unfortunately I don't have space for another fridge. I'm looking for a way of storing fruit/veg for the hottest months of the year - normally I keep them in the locker in the cratch which works really well, but it's getting a bit warm in there now. It's a temporary thing, only for a few months.  Fridge/freezer has other food stored, salad/veg takes up a lot of room. and doesn't really need the colder storage of a fridge. :) 

 

Cut a trap in the floor, remove a little ballast and store them on the base plate.

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1 hour ago, Old Son said:

Have you thought about cutting a hole in the floor and letting the canal keep the temperature down? If you don't want the lid in an obvious position, you could position it in a cupboard.

 

49 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

Cut a trap in the floor, remove a little ballast and store them on the base plate.

When we were looking for our boat, we saw some really great ideas like this, think the brochures called this area 'wine storage'. 

 

You've given me an idea though (I know ... ?), I'm pretty sure the bottom of the metal cratch locker is on the base plate -  perhaps insulating the inside of the locker along the outer 'wall' that catches the sun. The locker is good because it's not totally closed, a small amount of air does circulate.

 

“Problems are nothing but wake-up calls for creativity” – Gerhard Gschwandtner

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1 hour ago, Jennifer McM said:

 

When we were looking for our boat, we saw some really great ideas like this, think the brochures called this area 'wine storage'. 

 

You've given me an idea though (I know ... ?), I'm pretty sure the bottom of the metal cratch locker is on the base plate -  perhaps insulating the inside of the locker along the outer 'wall' that catches the sun. The locker is good because it's not totally closed, a small amount of air does circulate.

 

“Problems are nothing but wake-up calls for creativity” – Gerhard Gschwandtner

 

 

If that worked well, no-one would buy fridges....

 

 

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Just now, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

 

If that worked well, no-one would buy fridges....

 

 

But, but but.... as mentioned, to store veges etc., doesn't have to be as cold as a fridge. Ideal temperature range is 10C to 15C, whereas a fridge shouldn't go above 4C.

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6 minutes ago, Jennifer McM said:

But, but but.... as mentioned, to store veges etc., doesn't have to be as cold as a fridge. Ideal temperature range is 10C to 15C, whereas a fridge shouldn't go above 4C.

 

Ah now this illustrates the effect where a thread reaches a critical length, which this thread clearly has now. That length being were people (e.g. moi!) no longer read the whole thing before jumping in with an irrelevant comment, or re-making a point already covered but not realised because they hadn't bothered to read the whole thing. 

 

:P

 

P.S. And then they post in the thread pointing out this effect, making it even longer.....

 

 

 

Edited by Mike the Boilerman
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have a look at some of the heavy duty polystyrene boxes that meat companies like donald russell use for delivery (fresh or frozen meat sent through normal courier companies).

we use one (made by styropak) with 40mm walls and find that if filled with frozen food and stored in the cratch (during the height of summer) it will keep food frozen solid for just over a week as long as you are only opening it once a day.

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40 minutes ago, Jess-- said:

have a look at some of the heavy duty polystyrene boxes that meat companies like donald russell use for delivery (fresh or frozen meat sent through normal courier companies).

we use one (made by styropak) with 40mm walls and find that if filled with frozen food and stored in the cratch (during the height of summer) it will keep food frozen solid for just over a week as long as you are only opening it once a day.

Wow, brilliant. Thanks for info, will have a look. ?

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just an extra note, they work better if they are crammed full (thermal mass), and would fail dismally to keep a single bag of peas frozen.

 

we have a smaller one previously used by donald russell (made by styropack) that we use for keeping takeaways hot while driving home and decided to try a bigger one for frozen foods.

our first one we tried was made by custompak (all over ebay) and was very light / flimsy and not as dense as the styropack one, it did not perform well at all.

we then phoned styropack and managed to get one of their larger boxes (somehow as a free sample) sent to us

Edited by Jess--
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10 minutes ago, Jess-- said:

just an extra note, they work better if they are crammed full (thermal mass), and would fail dismally to keep a single bag of peas frozen.

It's not that I want to keep anything frozen, just want to reduce the temperature to just below 15C for storing vegetable/salad stuff - the other concern is that vegs need air. 

 

I'm that ancient I can (just about) remember days before a fridge was an essential household item. In homes there used to be thralls in a pantry, a stone/marble shelf to keep foods cool - which I guess the base plate could make a good thrall.

Edited by Jennifer McM
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3 minutes ago, Jennifer McM said:

It's not that I want to keep anything frozen, just want to reduce the temperature to just below 15C for storing vegetable/salad stuff - the other concern is that vegs need air. 

 

I'm that ancient I can (just about) remember days before a fridge was an essential household item. In homes there used to be thralls in a pantry, a stone/marble shelf to keep foods cool - which I guess the base plate could make a good thrall.

I think the need for air would kill most methods as options since the air movement will carry heat with it.

 

I too remember houses with no fridges (or electric or running water).

Water was from a well (hand pumped)

keeping things cool was done with a cupboard built into a north facing wall (2 foot thick stone wall)

Heating / cooking was from a rayburn that burnt non-stop for 360 days a year

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 when one of our party had a dietary requirement that needed refrigerating, i bought one of these for a back country canoe trip in Canada:

https://www.basspro.com/shop/en/yeti-hopper-flip-soft-cooler

The sales person said it would keep food cold for a week.  

 

He lied.

 

But if you don't need to carry it, there are other models available as well, like https://www.basspro.com/shop/en/Cabelas-Polar-Cap-Equalizer-40-Quart-Cooler.

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3 minutes ago, Jess-- said:

keeping things cool was done with a cupboard built into a north facing wall (2 foot thick stone wall)

 

Yep! My 1920 brick-built house had a pantry inside a north facing wall and a marble slab shelf for the cool stuff. Worked surprisingly well at being 'cool', but a fridge it was not. 

 

On a stinking hot summer's day it might be perhaps 18c on the shelf, I'd say.  

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I use bottles of frozen water in the cooler. The gel freezer packs are really rather useless but if you freeze the 1.5l pastic bottles filled (and refilled when necessary) with tap water, they will last a couple of days. So I have a large insulated cooler box and just pack all the drinks stuff, particularly, in there which frees up fridge space for general items. I changed the fridge for a larder fridge and bought a small table top square freezer with front opening door and that gets packed up and it's where the water bottles go to refreeze of course!

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20 minutes ago, Mike the Boilerman said:

 

Yep! My 1920 brick-built house had a pantry inside a north facing wall and a marble slab shelf for the cool stuff. Worked surprisingly well at being 'cool', but a fridge it was not. 

 

On a stinking hot summer's day it might be perhaps 18c on the shelf, I'd say.  

the one that springs to mind was a lot colder, small welsh cottage sunk into a 45 degree hill on the west side of the valley.

in mid summer the sun vanishes at 6pm, in winter you only saw it for about an hour a day.

 

one of my regrets was not buying the place when it was offered to me for a ridiculously low price (I just hadn't got the money and the terms of the deal would have ruled out a mortgage)

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Having had boats with outboards and little generating capacity I used the cupboard with hole to the bilge idea. 

However last summer I invested in solar, mppt and a new battery bank, topped off with a Dometic compressor fridge, thermostatic, adjustable, draws 2ah ish once cooled down and maintaining the temp. Costly but does the job. We still use the cool cupboard for some things. 

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In australian summer we us a good eski withtwo ice blocks from the fridge for fruit and veg , in our camper. You must rotate the blocks daily.

inspite of that we have plenty of mouldy fruit but it can be a bit hotter there. On warm days 40plus the fridge struggles as does the turbo on the engine..

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On 17/05/2019 at 06:28, Old Son said:

Have you thought about cutting a hole in the floor and letting the canal keep the temperature down?

I knew a chap who did that but letting the canal in through the floor meant he couldn’t travel afterwards...

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