I know there was a post about this some where before but I can't find it any where. So here it is. I have been told that it is better to carry a few small coolers instead of a big on. Like one for things that need to be frozen and one for things that just need to be kept cool. What I don't know is what the best cooler size (and brands) would be for a group of like 3 people. I plan on buying my coolers this weekend so any advise will be greatly appreciated.
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Tampa Bay Area
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Re: Coolers
Tue, April 22, 2008 - 3:47 PMMake sure they are the 5 or 6 day type.
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Re: Coolers
Tue, April 22, 2008 - 4:17 PMI think all ours are Coleman or igloo or rubbermaid, just what was on sale. All the stickers are long gone, so I don't know the sizes. We have a personal one for the car, a small one for the four wheeled bike, a smallish one for company drinks, two larger ones for food and drinks we don't share, and a bigass extreme temps cooler for the frozen if we do frozen.
You will want at least one really good one for food, but yeah, if it is too big, you won't be able to wrangle it easily. I've never cared for the ones on wheels, but some folks like those. The personal cooler for the car makes it nice if you're driving long distances. No matter the size of the group, the frozen food cooler stays shut as much as possible, don't let people put drinks or snacks in it.
Three coolers for three people should be more than enough, now you get to figure out who does the cooler draining and maintaining and ice runs. No one wants to do that! -
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Re: Coolers
Tue, April 22, 2008 - 5:16 PMGood advice from Anti M!
If you decide to religate one cooler to frozen foods I recommend that you use dry ice (wrapped in newspaper) and tape the cooler closed with duct tape. Do not open this ice chest unless you absolutely have to, like to remove your dinner for that night (preferably in the AM) placing that food into your "on deck" ice chest. This is where good meal planning comes into play. Mark all your meals so you don't have to dig around too much. Put the stuff you're going to eat first on top.
As with all coolers, keep them in what might be described as "hard shade" like under a truck or in the shadow of an RV. If you can, put them on top of a closed cell pad (like ensolite used for backpacking) and then cover them with an old sleeping bag or moving blanket. The more insulation you have over and around your ice chests the better.
The only ice chest that you might want to have out ("on deck") would be the one for your beverages, which should also be kept in the shade and covered whenever possible. You may want to put your lunch stuff in there. Just be sure your food is sealed very, very well as ice chest water has a funny way of migrating into sealed zip-lock bags.
Recycle any water you drain from your cooler by using it for things like foot baths (oooh soooo niiice), spray mister bottles, bandanas, etc. You may wish to filter it through a piece of cloth before using it in a spray mister though.
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Re: Coolers
Tue, April 22, 2008 - 5:28 PMi am sure it is out of the question. buttttttttttt. i have a portable fridge/freezer.... runs on 110 or 12 volt. , will go down to 2 degrees. pricey. but.... no ice to buy, no propane to burn. since i already have the solar panels and batteries. it just made sense. -
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Re: Coolers
Tue, April 22, 2008 - 8:19 PMHey if ya got the power, more power to ya! But for just drinks a cooler is handy, won't always be opening the fridge. And what's your back-up plan for your chilled foods?
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Re: Coolers
Tue, April 22, 2008 - 8:34 PMIf you wanted to spend an extra penny or two, Coleman makes a "Stirling Freezer" that only takes 24W of power. Its a bit pricey, but for that power level you wouldn't even register on a camps genset. If you brought along one deep cycle battery, say 50 AH @ 12 V, you would be able to power it for 3/4 of a day just on that battery in case the genset pooped out.
But for my money, if you wanted really good normal coolers, I'd get bargain ones and make up a 6" thick insulation box for them made from pink board bought @ your local home supply place. You can do that with just duct tape and it is very inexpensive. Plus you can store the pink board flat while travelling, and assemble the boxes on the playa really quick. Dry Ice is a winner as well, but if you can, get it from an industrial gas supply place.. they will probably only sell 25lb blocks or more but its worth it. Ask them how to handle and cut it up safely. -
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Re: Coolers
Wed, April 23, 2008 - 5:21 AMI wish, but this years burn is being done on a squeaky tight budget ( now that my hubby had to put the truck in the shop). Though it sounds like a great idea for next year. -
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Re: Coolers
Wed, April 23, 2008 - 6:44 AMI get it :) Well, pink board is not that expensive! You could check out the prices and decide if you can afford to use it. Believe me, that extra insulation will prove very useful! It would even be worthwhile to get a cheap styrofoam cooler or two and pack it around them so you could have at least one or two that were very tight. And the advice to put ALL of your ice in ziplock baggies, the large size, for cooling is fantastic since you wouldn't have to worry that much about draining. I am definitely using that tip.
Good luck.
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Re: Coolers
Wed, April 23, 2008 - 10:10 AMFor the budget-minded, there are a lot of free things that provide decent insulation. Old blankets, cardboard, used bubble wrap, just about anything light with trapped air should work.
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Re: Coolers
Wed, April 23, 2008 - 8:04 PMAlso, you can buy the silver bubble wrap (used to wrap hot water heaters, etc.) at just about any Home Depot, OSH, etc. Buy it by the foot, enough to wrap your cooler in, and it provides great insulation! Or, even cheaper, use the reflective space blankets that are like $1.99 per. Just ... insulate! -
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Re: Coolers
Thu, April 24, 2008 - 12:17 PMReflectix is better (and cheaper) that the stuff for water heaters. (It is almost the same stuff)
www.homedepot.com/webapp/wc...uctDisplay
I made a neat personal cooler out of a .50 ammo box lined with Reflectix. Works pretty good!
Martini Steve
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Re: Coolers
Thu, April 24, 2008 - 10:22 AMHey! I never thought of this. Plus, if you were really adventurous, you could troll around, find guys doing house renovation and check out their dumpster. I've occasionally seen reams of pink and blue board being tossed, plus other salvageable materials.
Hmm.. possibly a source for materials for my Yurt :)
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Re: Coolers
Sat, April 26, 2008 - 10:22 AMDude you are a genius. My brother in law builds houses for a living and they throw away sooooo much stuff. I could kiss you!
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Re: Coolers
Tue, April 22, 2008 - 9:23 PMA word on cooler water and 'draining'.
In your cooler, put your ice into 5 gallon ziplock bags inside your cooler. Keep all your other food in ziplocs as well, to avoid any contamination. When your ice melts, the water is clean and cold. Fill your drinking bottles and camelback with it. I did this last year and it supplied ALL of my drinking water needs for the week, and then some. I had cold water all the time. -
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Re: Coolers
Tue, April 22, 2008 - 10:01 PMDN's idea is good, although I find that gallon plastic bottles (preferably recycled) are a bit more rugged. Fill them with fresh water, but not all the way, freeze them with the cap off to allow for expansion, and they will last for days (maybe the whole week if the cooler is well insulated).
I like reusable plastic containers for the food as well. Again, a bit more rugged than plastic bags.
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Re: Coolers
Tue, April 22, 2008 - 10:30 PMSome more cooler tips:
* Keep your cooler in the shade! (I know, it should go without saying)
* Bring old blankets or towels to throw over you cooler. that helps too.
* Keep your cooler off the ground. The ground has much more thermal mass than air and conducts heat into a cooler more quickly. For this reason, put your cooler up on blocks, bricks, or something.
* Whatever bottled water you bring from home, freeze it beforehand. Even if you decide to buy water in Reno (and really, who doesn't?), you should also bring a few 1gallon jugs of water that you froze at home. Put them in the freezer several days before you leave so they're frozen solid, then put 'em in the bottom of your ice chests.
* Keeping cold things cold is easier than making warm things cold. For this reason, your perishables should be kept in a different cooler than the one you dump those 100 degree beers into. Beer that got warm for a day can always be recooled later. Ham that got warm for a day, eh, not so much.
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Re: Coolers
Wed, April 23, 2008 - 5:15 AMOMG! Thanks guys for all of the great advice. Apparently I had a lotto learn in this department. I feel much more prepared (mentally) now and have revised the shopping list for this weekend. And I may be rethinking my menu plans so I won't have as much frozen stuff. That cooler sounds like it can be a real pain.
So here's one more question... Which would be better at keeping them cool, putting them up on a pallet of cinder blocks? I'm wondering because I do remember grabbing a cinder block once and burnt my hand, but that had been out in the sun. Would the heat conduct upwards from the ground as well? -
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Re: Coolers
Wed, April 23, 2008 - 8:56 AMWe put our coolers on carpet squares on the ground tarp, with the shade and cozies I made, they're fine. Cinder blocks are heavy and large, overkill. We throw our coats over them in the daytime too.
I've always been leery of the melted ice water, we use it to boil for washing dishes or people, but not for drinking. Not after the year we got dirt-contaminated ice. Sandy and icky. Rare, but it can happen. Put me off it personally, but as DN says it is a workable idea.
If you are going to freeze bottles of water, do a few practice ones so you get the hang of ice expansion shoving the lids off your bottles.
Dry ice? Yes it will keep your food frozen. It will also carbonated it. Weird. We do fine with block ice and minimal frozen meals. Turns out we can't get everyone in camp all at the same time, and then there's the variety of nutritional needs. Also, we're "dry kitchen" campers rather than "full kitchen" campers. There's a thread on that around here somewhere. Very much a matter of personal preference. -
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Re: Coolers
Wed, April 23, 2008 - 2:24 PMFirst "Thank you". Second <with the shade and cozies I made> please please please tell me tat you have a pattern or at least a pic. That so sounds like a fun project. :} Yup.... I'm a craft dork. -
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Re: Coolers
Wed, April 23, 2008 - 3:00 PM<<Yup.... I'm a craft dork.>>
Wow, have you ever found the right circle to hang out with! -
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Dorks
Wed, April 23, 2008 - 8:33 PMI'm with you Anne. I read that and thought...since when are craft folks dorks? That's kinda like telling an engineer he's uncool. Damn, engineers are hot.
Welcome home Freedom... where skill, talent, contribution, participation, cleverness, resourcefulness, ingenuity, creativity an' all that good stuff makes you a dork amongst dorks.
Dorks are sexy.
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Re: Coolers
Thu, April 24, 2008 - 10:28 AMThe idea with separation from the ground is to either put insulating materials between the cooler and the ground, or to block it up on small things (to minimize the heat conduction). So, 4 bits of 1x2 will do well, and I can't imagine you won't find some folks with a bit of scrap wood on the playa ;)
Or, alternatively, bring bits of a 1x2 with you. I'm sure you can find enough for free. If not, find a tree, hack off a branch and MAKE some spacers :) And in addition, you'd probably want to put some scrap carpet under that as well.
Woo! -
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Re: Coolers
Thu, April 24, 2008 - 10:31 AMYou know just after I wrote this I thought of a geeky way to make pedestal spacers for a heavy cooler :)
Get some branchwood, between 1" - 2" in diameter.
Saw it into 12 equal length pieces.
Sharpen one end of each piece really well.
Bind them together in 4 groups of 3 anyway you like.. glue would be great but zipties would work if you used two.
Voila! Instant pedestal :) Just rest the cooler on the sharp bits. -
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Re: Coolers
Fri, April 25, 2008 - 3:01 PMThe easiest thing to do with coolers at Burning Man is to forget about them-- and there they are sitting in the sun at 2PM.
the best thing to do is keep them out of the sun and insulated. I don't think that keeping them off the ground buys you all that much if they're in the shade.
If you have a good-sized shade structure, there will likely be a place in it that is pretty much always in the shade. Another thing is to minimize the amount of surface area that is exposed-- put all your coolers together and cover them as one unit. One year we turned the cooler pile into a "chaise lounge" complete with a pad, a furry blanket, and pillows.
You could go on and on with this. If you know any river-runners (esp. desert southwest rivers), they will have a thousand and one tricks for keeping stuff cool for a week or more. only get into the coolers once per day, arrange your food into coolers by day so you don't have to get into the "day 3-4-5" cooler until you've cleaned out the day 1-2 cooler...have a "day cooler" for drinks and lunch supplies, and load it up in the morning so that the main cooler doesn't get opened when it's hot outside...
finally, and this works pretty well-- take some of that cooler water and soak a towel with it (not so that it drips all over the playa and makes a mess-- just enough for the towel to get good and wet but not drippy), and then put the towel on top of the coolers--voila-- instant evaporative cooler (it really works). -
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Re: Coolers
Fri, April 25, 2008 - 9:16 PMOk now THESE are some good tips!!!
Thanks mate!
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Re: Coolers
Sat, April 26, 2008 - 10:25 AM<You know just after I wrote this I thought of a geeky way to make pedestal spacers for a heavy cooler :)
Get some branchwood, between 1" - 2" in diameter.
Saw it into 12 equal length pieces.
Sharpen one end of each piece really well.
Bind them together in 4 groups of 3 anyway you like.. glue would be great but zipties would work if you used two.
Voila! Instant pedestal :) Just rest the cooler on the sharp bits.>
love this.... and if I have time I may just have to find a way to pretty it up to. If I do I'll make you a set as well as a "Thank you" for the idea.
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