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Quote: Originally posted by fleck2 on 07/8/2020

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We've got the coleman too, buy 2kg of supermarket ice cubes slash the bag and drop them in it, then drain the water out every 2 days when you add 1kg of new ice cubes.

Fantastic things, better than compressor fridges in many ways 👍

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Quote: Originally posted by Mucker1884 on 31/7/2020

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The better the cool box, the better the results.
"Pre-freeze" the cool box at home. Load it with big frozen blocks (2L bottles of water, ideally). When they thaw/after 12 hours or so, replace them with fresh frozen bottles. These will now take much longer to thaw.
If need be, start this process 2 or 3 days before departure, so the last load almost struggle to thaw at all, due to the inside of the box being so cold.

Load up with as much cold stuff as possible. Consider pre-freezing drinks/milk etc that won't be needed for a day or so. Certainly consider loading stuff from the fridge. Avoid putting room temperature stuff in there, as it will simply try to warm up the inside of the box.
Any remaining space could be filled with freezer blocks and/or frozen 1L bottles of water. (Such a large block of ice will take longer to thaw than a freezer block, which in turn would last longer than ice cubes... but every little helps!)

Some cool boxes (Coleman Xtreme from experience) claim to keep things cold for 5 days. With the above approach, and of course keeping the opening and closing of the box lid to a minimum, I can vouch it really does work!

Also check out the camp site... quite a number offer freezers for the very reason of re-freezing ice packs etc.

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Quote: Originally posted by Mucker1884 on 02/8/2020

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If using loose ice cubes, Keep things “dry” with some sort of grid/raised base, or all in sealed containers. Don’t be overly tempted to drain away any thawed ice, as that one inch of nice cold water will just get replaced with warm/ambient air.

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