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Subject Topic: How to power up cool box Post Reply Post New Topic
Personrachel a
27/6/2017 at 8:48am
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Hello just after some advice hopefully going camping bank holiday but won't have electric hook-up so how do I power my call box and charge phones without me having to resort to plugging it into my car thank you


PersonJames Watt
27/6/2017 at 9:13am
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Goodness Rachael, are you Blonde?   




Seriously though, you could purchase a small 12 volt car battery, and put that in your tent.

Solar Panels would cost much more to produce the power you need, but no good at night.


Other than that ??????


Regards James

-------------
In the beginning there was darkness.
Then I bought a tent.
I'm not destitute, I'm just poor.


PersonColin21
27/6/2017 at 2:49pm
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Cool-boxes are notoriously heavy on battery power. Even a large leisure battery will be completely flattened in a matter of hours by many cool-boxes. Charging phones on the other hand uses next to no power, so a small leisure battery or car battery would be more than adequate for that. I would be inclined to use a non-electric cool-box with ice-packs, and get them re-frozen locally if possible.

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Colin


Personlidds0
27/6/2017 at 3:05pm
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Charge phones from a powerpack or via the car on days out. I agree with Colin regarding the coolbox, there's no other way to power them really. Without EHU you're looking at either cheapie and ice packs (or, do you have one of those dual-lid cool boxes, where you can use either 12v or a standard lid?), or a more advanced passive cooler (such as Icey-Tek), or a 3-way fridge (run on gas).


Personrachel a
29/6/2017 at 7:21am
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thank you


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Personhankakampa
01/7/2017 at 8:36am
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rachel - if your going away for just a weekend - heres something that will be perfect for you!.

get a 2Litre bottle of water and freeze it solid at home in your freezer.

put that into your cool box along with your food and drinks that you have already pre- chilled. - do not put warm / room temperature food into the coolbox - as that warms it up.

you ll find that the 2L bottle of solid ice will keep the inside of your coolbox cold easily for a weekend just so long as your not going in and out of it every 10 minutes.
it works perfect for keeping milk, bacon some drinks etc and that kind of thing nicely chilled for the weekend without worrying about ehu / power.

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Personecocker
03/7/2017 at 12:55pm
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Can't help with powering a coolbox, but we recently purchased a 16000mAh power bank from Amazon

Not sure the solar charging actually works that well but it does a great job for us for phones and e-cigarette batteries. Took it to France the other week and got 3 days of pretty constant charging out of it. Well worth the money.


PersonCampingWithKidz
03/7/2017 at 8:27pm
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We do the same as hankakampa.
I freeze two 2 litre water bottles and put them at the bottom of the cool box then pack it up with pre-chilled food and wedge ice blocks and frozen gel pads (halfords) around the food.
Try and fill up the cool box as much as you can, adding smaller frozen bottles of water to the top if necessary, so that there are no warm spaces.
By the way, I am actually blonde. ;)


PersonWestonDave
04/7/2017 at 2:03pm
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We do an annual week camping at a big convention thing where there is no electric hook up so we need to keep a passive coolbox cold. To be fair there is an onsite ice block exchange service but its limited to a couple of blocks per day because otherwise they can't keep up.

So some tips from me learning stuff the hard way.

1. Pre-chill the cool box as well as any contents. If you put cold stuff, even frozen stuff into a box that is room temperature, the box will release some heat into the cold stuff inside it. Our trick is to start about 24 hours before we set off - fill the cool box with cold tap water (usually about 10C in the UK). That starts it off. Give that a good few hours with the cool box left somewhere as cool as possible. Generally before bed we change the water for fresh cold water and then lob in a couple of hard frozen two litre bottles of water. Leave that lot overnight and by morning you'll have a nice cold interior of the box to put your cold stuff into. Pack as suggested above.

2. Make use of evaporative cooling. Whilst on site put the box out somewhere shady so it gets a chance to get some air flow over it - then cover it as much as possible in an old towel etc which you need to keep wet. As the water evaporates it will absorb heat energy from the box surface cooling it. This helps to avoid heat starting to travel through to the inside. If you want to give it a try put a cloth on your bare arm and pour some warm tap water over it (warm because then you know its not the cold water which makes the effect you experience). In a few minutes your arm will start to feel cold - because the water in the cloth is taking heat from your arm to turn the water into vapour.

Finally if you can't get ice blocks frozen on site, a bag of ice cubes in most supermarkets is about £1 and gives a good lot of "cold" for your money. Just watch out because the bags invariably leak so you end up with a load of water in the bottom of the cool box.


Personosvic
13/7/2017 at 10:45am
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i was given some advice to take frozen food that will gradually defrost? anyone tried this I'm thinking of doing this for our first trip.


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PersonBernie47
13/7/2017 at 1:29pm
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Quote: Originally posted by osvic on 13/7/2017
i was given some advice to take frozen food that will gradually defrost? anyone tried this I'm thinking of doing this for our first trip.


I do this but I cook the food before freezing it then just have to warm it up before eating it, much easier when camping. It also means that even if it thaws out it will keep for a few days.

I cook and freeze sausages etc. for breakfasts and curries, mince, bolognese etc. for main meals.

-------------
Bernie


PersonNathan B
15/7/2017 at 6:38pm
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Frozen water and plan your food , day one top of box day 2 freeze and put at bottom or what we do is take 2 cool boxes freeze every thing in one of them , and but a bottle of frozen water in each box

-------------
cheers
Nathan


Personandy monty
15/7/2017 at 10:14pm
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get a igloo maxicool box £60-£80 ish

and grab a bag of ice a day from the supermarket £1 a bag

it will take years of camping to offset solar panels / leisure batteries

or buy a 3 way fridge and run it on gas (outside the tent)



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