Cool Box

Athene V30

Athene V30

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Playa del Ingles, Gran Canaria in Winter, the boat
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Having a rather basic boat I don't have a cool box or fridge. Fortunately the keel is hollow so I can use the bilge for a few days and bring a cool box from home with some of the items frozen to help keep it cold over our long hot weekends etc.

Have been looking for a portable fidge / cool box to keep milk & meat fresh for longer that doesn't need a lot of battery power when at sea and can be plugged into the mains if in a marina (to get my money's worth!).

Have found some in camping shops but seem to need 48watts at 12volts which I think is 4amps and would destroy the battery in no time. Does anyone know of any well insulated, low power consuming devices or am I living in hope and should continue to use the keel!
 
The camping shop ones tend to be the cheaper end of the market. I have bought one to cool at home and to keep stuff cool/frozen whilst the (new and soon to be installed) boat fridge gets cold.

If you look at something a bit more efficient like this Waeco jobbie you will see that it draws 35 amps but average running time is only 10% so effectively only 3.5 amps if left on. Battery charger in port or engine running obviously necessary long term.
 
Most of the cheap cool-boxes use a Peltier-effect unit which can be reversed to warm the box but is very inefficient. They typically use about 4 amps and can be used as a temporary measure for transferring food, especially if plugged into a car electrics when driving to the boat but are quite unsuitable for your purpose. You would be better off with a plain cool-box with ice or freezer-bags, or ideally a box with a compressor unit which will only draw about an amp. These are bulkier and of course, quite expensive.
 
I have no experience, but would have thought 4A would be about right if not a bit low for a fridge. If you have say an 80AH domestic battery then (with nothing else running) that would give 10hrs full on cooling to 50% capacity drain. If you can cool in the marina on the mains, then perhaps 1hr on 1 hr off for the fridge would give enough colling until you reach the next port of call, and that would equate to 20hrs.

So there you go, that all goes to prove that your milk and eggs will be well gone way before you reach the Azores /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif.
 
I find that supermarket bags of ice in an insulated cool box keeps food & drinks really cold for at least 2 and usually 3 days, provided that it is chilled when you put it in, and is still OK for another couple of days.
 
What we used to do was buy the big bottles of water the sort of gallon size and freeze them, stick in the coolbox and provided the food was WELL chilled it would last for days and days, you could then drink the water after.
 
We have one of the Halfords special offer hot/cool boxes and have used it to great effect when camping, so the intention is to carry on and use it on the boat, well, it does make a handy step too as it fits the gap perfectly /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif
What I found was that if you open the lid and put the box in the chest freezer it keeps stuff cold better. Just leave it in there and when ready to go, load it up still in the freezer, and close the lid before taking it out. So it's already super cool and only takes a bit of power to keep it that way for ages. Just remember to open it as little as possible and keep it upright. Works for me /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif
 
I use a sailing-type electric coolbox. I think it is Waeco. It has a cigarette 12v lighter thingie and an inverter thingie so I can plug it into the mains when in a marina.

This is what I do. I take the frozen icepacks from the freezer at home and put them in the coolbox before getting in the car. Then I plug the thing in the car while I drive down so the frozen icepacks are still frozen on arrival at boat.

I leave some of the frozen icepacks in the electric coolbox thingie and then put anything like spread, meat or really perishable stuff in the electric thing and plug it into mains (I'm in a marina, so I can). Then I put the rest of the frozen icepacks into the boat's coolbox (not electrical) and put other, less critical foodstuff in there.

If I could be bothered, I would plug the portable icebox into the boats system while the engine was running, but since I am scared I would forget to unplug it when I turned the engine off, I tend not to.

Now I have a friend who has somehow wired it all up so it ONLY charges IF the engine is running, which seems very fiendish but I haven't got the nause to do that.

Leaving the icebox overnight plugged into the mains will actually re-freeze the icepacks, so it is quite efficient, but I think it would drain the boat's batteries quite quickly if left on them without the engine running.

Anyhow, haven't died of food poisoning, or drained the batteries yet, so what I'm doing seems to be OK.
 
There is a website that does a water powered fridge thingy, works on evaporation, you just pour water in through the top every so often and it cools as it evaporates, you'll never freeze your ice cubes but will keep cold beer cold for ages.
website was vw curtains or something.
 
Easiest way to do that is with two buckets, one inside the other, with a lid big enough for the largest bucket. Insulate the lid with polystyrene, put sand at the bottom of the bigger bucket, put the smaller bucket in the middle of the sand and fill the gap between the two buckets with more sand. Soak the sand to saturation then let the evaporation take the heat away. Not sure how heavy it would be but the theory has always worked. Had one made of something like chalk back in the early 70's and it worked well
 
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Easiest way to do that is with two buckets, one inside the other, with a lid big enough for the largest bucket. Insulate the lid with polystyrene, put sand at the bottom of the bigger bucket, put the smaller bucket in the middle of the sand and fill the gap between the two buckets with more sand. Soak the sand to saturation then let the evaporation take the heat away. Not sure how heavy it would be but the theory has always worked. Had one made of something like chalk back in the early 70's and it worked well

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Even easier: put your beer/milk/butter or whatever in bucket about half full of water. wet a tea towel and drape it over the top of whatever you're trying to keep cool, making sure that the ends of the teatowel are in the water. put the bucket outdoors but in the shade (e.g. shady side of cockpit).
 
I freeze 2 litre milk bottles and stick them in a portable coolbox to use on board. A single 2 litre bottle doesn't unfreeze over a weekend. It's by far the cheapest way to cold beer for a weekend. Two or three seems to do 3-4 days. I've built in a coolbox on board now with Celotex and they last equally well in that.
 
LPG powered Cool Box

I bought a cool box from a Caravan shop a few years ago that could run off either 12V, 240V or LPG. Cost around £100, bought it just after the boys were born, we wanted to keep mainly bottled baby food and milk cool in the summer.
I used to place it in the cockpit and ran it on LPG. Very economical on LPG and could almost make ice. No idea how it worked.
Used to take it home, we would fill it up and chill down on the house 240V, put in car and run off the 12V then transfer to boat and run off 12V or LPG.

Unfortunately we don't have it anymore, sold it for a song on the YBW "For Sale" forum a year ago.
 
Jessie's previous owners here. We had, and still have, on Jessie#2, a Waeco 18 litre fridge (portable coolbox style), and also the rectifier and Waeco's own insulated jacket (for the fridge!). It draws 3 amps, is extremely efficient, and also quiet. It does need beefy wiring. We have been on the boat for months at a time for the last 3 summers (Poole to the Med in stages) and have run it 24/7. Only once we had to switch it off, when on a drying mooring for almost a week. We were too profligate with the lights and the fridge started to struggle. Normally we use the lights very little, relying on a LED lamp with batteries, and those little LED things you press to switch on, which are everywhere now from B&Q to IKEA. Jessie 1 has an outboard engine so that doesn't provide much power for the ship's battery. We had a Solara SM60 solar panel and a Rutland 503 wind generator, and between them they kept the fridge happy. We used shore power when available, but that wasn't all that often. It 's fairly pricey but we very highly recommend the Waeco - butter, milk, cheese, meat for the barbie and even cold beer when there's space ... And quiet - a big issue in a small open plan boat.
 
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