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just taken delivery of this:
https://www.dometic.com/en/se/products/food-and-beverage/coolers/electric-coolers/dometic-combicool-acx-40-g-_-31770
I like the idea that it can run off gas if needed, on the off chance we are somewhere without hookup or want to take it with us to the beach / family outdoor bbq
Seems a bit extravagant, however it will get daily use as a milk cooler in the dressing room so we don't have to trapse downstairs to make a cup of tea.
Even though I checked the measurements lots of times its bigger than I expected. It was about the smallest of the table top fridges I was looking at, also lightest at 18kg.
It does look well built, though a couple of areas underneath I can see some insulation foam escape which looks a bit messy and made me wonder if I've got a second. The rest of it looks smart. God knows how heavy it will be when full of stuff.
We looked at small table fridges but I couldn't find anything small enough and fitting everything in the car is a concern. I also was a bit worried about transporting around a fridge not designed for transport and possible reliability issues. Lots of the powered coolboxes say not for perishables so we ruled those out
Oh and its completely silent, but does kick out a bit of heat from the back when on mains
I can confirm that Dave’s lovely van is more than capable of lifting its skirts to get on and off of campsites and gets used for family camping trips on a regular basis. He even occasionally turns up for biking trips
You can't call it camping though Jason. For example, you've not just been camping, you've been motorhoming :D:D:D:D:D
So a question for coolbox users on this thread.. drain out the cold water (from melted ice) regularly or leave it in there? Obviously if you can top it up with ice then get it out of there, but when you can’t, which keeps the box cooler longer (my gut is leaving it in)?
defo leave the water in. The H2O sucks heat in from the surroundings keeping things cool. There are two aspects to this, the specific heat capacity of the water and the Latent Heat of the water.
Say you have 5kg of H20 in your cool box at -10 Celcius then it would need 4200x5x10 Joules to bring it up to melting point. cMDeltaT
Then it would need 5 times the latent heat for it to melt. (Can't be bothered looking up the latent heat value)
Then when it is water at 0.005 Celsius it continues to suck in heat from the surroundings according to the origianal CMDeltaT formula. So assuming you're target temp is 10C you still have another 210 Kilojoules of cooling capacity to be imparted.
I might have got some of the above wrong, since it's about 30 years ago, but can't be bothered looking it up.
But either way, leave the cold water in
So a good spread of all those options then 😄
DT78 > was looking at that exact one, thanks. We don’t have a big freezer at home so freezing lots of bottles and ice packs to get a passive coolbox pre-chilled before we go is a bit tricky. Something I can plug in at home, run at 12v in the car and then on gas in a field seems really nice. Gas in a tent (even if it’s in a well ventilated porch) seems a bit dicey though.
This is purely car camping, we do hookup sometimes if it’s there but there’s a lot of good campsites that don’t have it so I don’t want to limit us to something that needs plugging in.
Our bus/bike wagon has a fair bit of space under the front seats, pondering a leisure battery under one of them, which might make a compressor fridge (lighter on battery right?)
a better option. We had a a Waeco one in a camper we rented in Australia and it did amazingly well in the heat.
The correct answer is 'it depends' of course. However.
I got a 'Dometic Combicool RC1700 Camping Fridge' last year to use for a couple of weeks camping in France in 30C-ish temps. Was really good - pretty much treat it as a normal fridge, 240V power at home to get it cold, 12V power on the way down, switch to gas when you're there (no hookup). Kept it outside the tent under a shelter-type thing, any minimal shelter would do I reckon, it will tolerate a bit of wet. Used most of a 4.5kg bottle for the fridge plus cooking for two weeks.
There seems to be a Covid tax on them this year, but it was about £200 last year.
You cant be talking about keeping much cool. Butter, milk, cream maybe or other 'ready meal' type things I would expect.
I'd look to size keeping in mind how much or little you intend to put into it. Some seem about 25lt, and thats pretty big, and more likely to be half empty volume wise.
So maybe you could look at something under the average do it all size so the amount needed to cool draws less amps.
Then you go buy a portable solar powered panel to charge it.
I did a short search with that in mind and the results for off grid camping, do suggest solar/small coolbox is a good way to go.
Theres also a few links to fishing boxes you again charge/run via a solar panel.
I see there are also a number of fireboxes that use thermal energy to produce electric for charging phones, cameras. That tech has been out a while, so maybe something along those lines to produce electric to charge or run a small toolbox.
Kids love a fire, a top class focal point and traditional as the tent, and if you give them each a stick they'll sit quietly and poke at it all night 😉
But are you sure this isnt just a bit too much effort and cost, given its with the kids. Would not a popular site or such near a village where cold food,milk etc can be bought daily ?. Which is also good for the smaller economy's.
The electric you get from one of those thermal Peter jobs will not be worth it for a 12v fridge or cook box. Solar maybe but it will have to be quite a decent set up to run a 12v fridge.