Best way of keeping food and drinks cool in a van for a week? Just bought van and thinking of getting split charge system with leisure battery fitted. On another forum some say compressor fridge, some say cool box fine while others say neither of those and get a non-powered Coleman Extreme coolbox. Apparently a cool box can drain leisure battery in a few days which I don’t want. If you have a van how do you get around this problem?

The gold standard in cool boxes is Dometic, prepare to lighten your wallet.

https://www.attwoolls.co.uk/dometic-cool-ice-33l-coolbox-p-4008

I borrowed a friend’s one for a 1 week Alps trip last year & only has to add ice / drain melt water once.

https://singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/are-all-passive-cool-boxes-created-equal/

I’ve had a Waeco CF45 compressor fridge for years and it’s been brilliant – will work as a freezer. Very low power drain with low voltage cut off to allow van to start if not on a leisure battery.
Wasn’t cheap when I bought it but it’s been worth it.

+1 for a waeco compressor fridge.
Just ensure you keep the cable to it from the battery as short and chunky as possible to avoid voltage drop.

+2 Waeco

Bookmarked

Those waeco fridges are nice but they are pretty pricy. For a long weekend we get by with a non powered coolbox and a few litre bottles of ice. Happily stays cold for a few days, but probably wouldn’t last a week. You can always buy more ice unless you in the wilds.

Apparently a cool box can drain leisure battery in a few days which I don’t want

most of them that have peltiers would be measured in hours.

Those Waeco coolbox-style fridges are about as good as it gets for power consumption for a compressor fridge – something like 10-15 amp hours per day consumption (from their specs).

A small upright compressor fridge (50 litre or so) will use 30-40 amp hours per day.

Peltier cool boxes will use upwards of 100 amp hours per day.

Bear in mind that if you have lead-acid batteries, you don’t really want to be discharging them more than ~50% on a regular basis, so for a 110 AH leisure battery (55AH useable, say) you’d get 3-4 days from the Waeco, 1-2 days from the upright fridge, or about half a day from a Peltier box (no other consumption).

Obviously, if you can charge the battery at the same time (engine charging while driving, solar, or electric hook-up), you can extend these. Likewise, more battery capacity helps *provided* you have the means to fully charge it – a 50% discharged lead-acid battery will, very roughly, take a minimum of about 10 hours to get back to anything like full charge.

100W of solar gets you – again very, very roughly – 5 amp hours per day in winter and 50+ amp hours in summer (UK).

I’ve used a Halfords 40l 12v/230v for a few years now and it does the job. Don’t think I paid £110 for it though

Halfords Coolbox

I’ve had a couple of Weaco 80l fridges. First one was hooked to 160ahr leisure batteries, with other minor use such phone charging, they would be knackered within 48 hours.

I’ve now got a pair of proper deep cycle golf cart batteries with 225ahr that can be discharged past 50%, however its a bit irrelevant as in the summer 200w of solar will run the fridge for about a five days with other general use, but when the van is parked at home I can leave the fridge running all summer and the solar will keep the batteries cycling between 75-100%.

So get some solar, and ensure your compressor fridge has loads of ventilation at the back as it makes it more efficient. Mine opens into the garage area so instead of having a restricted 2 inch air gap under the worktop it has the whole garage help keep the condenser cool.