Anyone have advice on how to extend the life of your ice in the cooler without the use of electricity?
I have been using the Mac as a live-aboard for the last few weeks and aside from storage problems, it has been relatively smooth living.
My current irritant is having to stop every day to replenish ice for the cooler
I have tried bags of ice and ice blocks (seperately). I was wondering about using both dry ice and bags of ice.??
Anyone have experience with this?
My (stock) cooler - a Coleman - will keep ice for a 3, maybe 4 days up here in the Northeast following a couple of simple steps
- Hard freeze day 3-4 food so that it helps keep day 1-2 food cold
- limit how much you open the food cooler by keeping drinks in another cooler
- Drink Guinness which you cool overboard to 55F
- I bought a better cooler which easily keeps ice for 5 days, Igloo I think
Scan the mods for some ideas on which coolers people like.
My brother the chemist say no to dry ice in boats as it releases co2 as it melts and can cause suffocation hazard in an enclosed space!
I have no personal experience with this bud I have seen a mod with a hose connected to the drain outlet of a cooler so that as the dry ice moves to a gaseous state the pressure in the cooler forces the gas out the hose to the outdoors! Keep a hatch open whenever opening the cooler for ventilation.
Hope this might help.
Others on this board should be able to contribute.
Putting the cusion on top of it helps. Wrapping it will help. Not opening it helps. Having enough ice helps, about 40 pounds. I have also heard of using empty plastic bags to take up the unused space helps.
We place our cooler in the deep freeze when not in use to pre cool..
We also keep pop in a separate cooler.
We prepare food in advance and freeze it prior to loading.
We have one cooler that is a 12v fridge style. Works great when connected to shore power. It will drain the house when connected overnight with no charger.
Sometimes I call my wife names and then things get cold enough to refreeze the food. When the temperature has dropped sufficiently, I tell her I was joking. Works great!
Against the recommendations i recieved i bought a dometic propane powered cooler. does not work well if not level, but will freeze while at anchor or at the slip and then will stay cool through the day with limited opening
In addition to the previous comments, add insulation to keep heat away from the cooler box.
If you have no equipment in the bilge under the cooler liner, then fill it with foam insulation material so that there is just room for the liner to fit down. Sheet foam can be bought a most home improvement stores like Lowes or Home Depot, 84 Lumber, etc.
If like me, you have equipment like bilge pumps, distribution panels or other stuff that needs to be accessed under the cooler liner, then line the liner with additional insualtion. I glued on two layers of double sided Reflectix brand of reflective aluminum and plastic "bubble wrap" sheet. Then cover the seat board the goes over the top of the cooler with the Reflectix also.
I also sewed a layer of the Reflectix on the outside of all my window covers to keep out sun and heat from coming through the windows to the interior. The above work with the reflectix took about $25 and an hour or so and has been so successful that i made window covers for my house and have saved $100 a month on my heating and AC bills.
Finally, if you are planing a day sail or a weekend cruise any time of year, freeze most of your drinking water and save it in a smaller cooler elsewhere so you don't have to open the big coller except once or twice per day.
Meal planning can include taking out some frozen food for the next meal at the same time you fix the current meal, placing it in the smaller cooler with the drinking water. That way it is slowlling thawing out and acting like ice to keep your water or beer cold and you have elieminated one opening of the big cooler.
The cooler is designed to keep things cold..not MAKE things cold..you put warm soda/etc in the cooler..it will shorten the life of the ice. Sometimes I actually carry a second cooler of ice (usually frozen in gallon water containers, or other container) and just replace them as needed (or buy ice as needed).
Practical Sailor just tested coolers...the Igloo (similar to the one we have) rated pretty poor..I also was less than impressed with the performance of the cooler myself. They rated the Coleman 'Ultimate Extreme' one of the best. This is what we will probably get.
I have tried 2 igloo coolers in the past few years with underwhelming results.
I try and precool it the night before with a lot of ice in the cooler..then load the food/drink in..can't say for sure how well it works..but it has to help a bit.
We've used dry ice in an Igloo 5 day cooler quite successfully. Place a layer of ice cubes in the bottom of the cooler, wrap the dry ice (10-15 lbs) in paper and a towel. Do not allow the dry ice to contact the plastic or it will crack the plastic. For sure. You can then add another 10 lbs of ice. The dry ice keeps the ice cold. We also freeze some plastic pint bottles of water, about 10, also a quart or 2 of juicy juice, etc. These stay frozen for quite awhile, then when they thaw you can drink them. It keeps the cooler from filling with melt water. We have our cooler under the rear dinette seat. You can frequently find dry ice at welding supply stores. We can also get it at our local Kroger.
I can't imagine that the Carbon Dioxide released as gas as the dry ice "melts" is in such concentrations as to be a hazard, as it is released very slowly over a multi-day period. Granted, it is heavier than our air, but in our boat we keep a good air flow going with the front hatch,etc. My first mate, a research lab manager concurs. Don't confuse CO2 with CO, carbon monoxide, a byproduct of combustion and a much greater threat via generators and outboards, in my humble opinion.
Another thing I'm going to experiment with this summer is wrapping the cooler , and lining the cavity where it sits, with a radiant barrier. I got some of this aluminized polyfabric recently to put on the rafters in my attic to try to reduce my AC bills. Apparently it reflects heat ( radiant energy ) quite effectively, we'll see. It's relatively cheap, easy to work with . You can tape it with aluminized vent tape.
We tried dry ice on the six day run from Key West to the Tortugas and back, and were not too impressed. Though it kept stuff cold, it also ruined some fruit we had in the cooler and seemed to actully permeate stuff we had in plastic bags. About the fourth day, it was gone.
It seemed to work better for those who maintained a separate cooler for bags of ice, augmented by dry ice, and then opened that cooler only once a day to use the bags of ice as needed in the other cooler(s) to keep the food cold. We had two coolers full of food; another just for ice would have been one too many.
It was also quite expensive. We spent enough on one block of dry ice to have kept us in daily bagged ice for more than two weeks.
We've decided as long as we can get bagged ice, we'll do so. If we can't, then we'll just have to learn to live without stuff that needs to be refrigerated.
And yes, if you keep certain items too close to the dry ice, it will freeze them. That's why keeping water ice around the dry ice is helpful. 4-5 days is our max with the dry ice, though. And it is expensive, but cleaner and less messy than 10 gallons of water sloshing around in the cooler. We must lift the cooler out from the under seat area to drain if it's full of water ice. With the dry ice, this isn't necessary on a 4-6 day trip, which is our max so far...
can't imagine that the Carbon Dioxide released as gas as the dry ice "melts" is in such concentrations as to be a hazard, as it is released very slowly over a multi-day period.
Correct...we hashed this out in a thread quite a while back - with almost minimal ventilation
You do punch your ticket out at 0.5% (v/v) concentration though, so I wouldnt call it non-toxic....
Chip Hindes wrote:"It was also quite expensive. We spent enough on one block of dry ice to have kept us in daily bagged ice for more than two weeks."
Thanks for all the input. The above quote answered my question. As it is I'm spending a buck-45 every day on a bag of ice. My wife suggests just buying a small dorm refrigerator and plugging into shore power. I was trying to avoid the added bulk onboard.
Yet again I think she has come up with the smart solution.
Although, brfore I take that route I may try insulating the cooler compartment to see if this has any added benefit
I usually freeze plastic bottles filled with water. That way when the ice melts it remains in the bottle and you don't have the water as a heat transfer medium between the cooler wall and the food. Having air surround the food provides more inslation.
If your staying in a marina, as you said you have been living on it for some time and the marina has elec. then go buy a dorm fridge from sears or someplace. 100 bucks and they are the size of a cooler. bag of ice a day 2.75 about 30 days the fridge paid for itself.
Mine works great and if you put two frozen 1/2 gallon jugs of drinking water in it, it stays cold for two days unplugged.
ooops sorry passed over your wifes sug. but shes right
