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Hi all, just recently purchased a coleman 50q xtreme coolbox and i seem to be struggling to get the temp down to "food zone" temp (1-5c) i've got just over 4 litres of solid ice in there using 2 frozen milk cartons but the thermometer only goes down to about 10c, is this normal or have i got a faulty box? i would of thought the temp would of dropped to round about freezing seem it only has to chill the air in the box.

Anybody got any thoughts on this matter, all help is appreciated im fairly new to camping.

Thanks for your advice.

Will keep trying more ice till i can get the temp down to 5c got the temp down to 8c over night but have put the frozen milk cartons back in the freezer and have another one freezing as well so will be experimenting with approx 6 litres of ice tonight.

Gonna do what pretty much everyone across this website has said when i take it out for the first time and thats layer of ice on the base, freeze everything that can be froze and put that in next, then put fresh stuff and drinks in next pre chilled of course, then a layer of cubes on top, keep the box out of the tent in the shade during the day and top up with ice from the shop daily. Gonna take a some ice blocks with me just in case there isn't a tesco near by and get the site owners to freeze a couple of them each night.

Used electric coolbox in the past but gonna be braving the peak district and without any ECU for the first time in three weeks can't wait but the worst thing that could happen is i reach into my new cool box and pull out a warm beer, i hate warm beer  

Quote: Originally posted by Fotogen on 05/7/2011

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Other alternatives for beer is immerse bottles in bucket of water.

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Quote: Originally posted by Gareth29 on 11/7/2011

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Mite be of interest to you, the review and modifications I did to my Coleman Xtreme. Here.

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Quote: Originally posted by grillnun on 11/7/2011

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Quote: Originally posted by Gareth29 on 11/7/2011

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Mite be of interest to you, the review and modifications I did to my Coleman Xtreme. Here.

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So just from putting a 1 cm thick polystyrene circle in the cup holders you can gain an extra day or two of ice?

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If I could offer a tip it would be to freeze three 5 litre water bottles and use them.  Yes they are bulky but this means that they have mass and will take ages to defrost.  They need at least 2-3 days in the freezer though to freeze properly.

When they are nearly defrosted in the cool box, we have bought packs of ice cubes from Lidl (89p per bag) and stuffed the ice cubes into the bottles, resealed them and put them in the cool box.  This is handy when there's nowhere to freeze water by the bottle and where campsites will charge a small fortune for freezing small ice-packs.  It also keeps your coolbox free of water from molten ice-cubes leaching blood from packs of meat etc as they get submerged and contaminating everything else that's in the box.