Camping Cooler/Fridge

What will i need? Seen the following in Halfords.

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Any thoughts or advice?

They are fine if you have electric hook up or whilst you're travelling, but they use too much power to run from a leisure battery for a more than a few hours. Also I personally find them too noisy, but I also can't stand a ticking clock or slightest buzz noise from anything. I find they are good to use as a normal cool box with ice blocks, with advantage of extra cooling when travelling.

We use a three way fridge, mostly on gas as we usually camp in the middle of nowhere, but when it is on electric it works as a proper fridge with an adjustable thermostat, you can even make a few ice cubes in it. It runs 100% silent and it's been faultless since we purchased it in 2004.

The disadvantages are it's a big beast to transport and a lot dearer to purchase than the electric cool boxes.

Simple mantra.

I Will Not Shop At Halfords, For Those Who Shop At Halfords Have Too Much Money.

£55.00 for a 24litre coolbox. £65.00 if you want to be able to power it of mains.

It was £30 or £35 last year from Aldi and Lidl for 30litre coolboxes that are mains or 12v.
3 year guarantee for both. Aldi are easier to deal with on returns.
If you Google "Aldi Electric Coolbox" then do the same for Lidl you will see that they have been on sale between April and June over the past couple of years. So hang on a few weeks and save £30.

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Remember

I Will Not Shop At Halfords, For Those Who Shop At Halfords Have Too Much Money

cazz wrote:They are fine if you have electric hook up or whilst you're travelling, but they use too much power to run from a leisure battery for a more than a few hours. Also I personally find them too noisy, but I also can't stand a ticking clock or slightest buzz noise from anything. I find they are good to use as a normal cool box with ice blocks, with advantage of extra cooling when travelling.

We use a three way fridge, mostly on gas as we usually camp in the middle of nowhere, but when it is on electric it works as a proper fridge with an adjustable thermostat, you can even make a few ice cubes in it. It runs 100% silent and it's been faultless since we purchased it in 2004.

The disadvantages are it's a big beast to transport and a lot dearer to purchase than the electric cool boxes.

Just a couple of points if you can find one that goes down to 18 below and it helps them to work if you forget the ice blocks and have room for a 2lit bottle of frozen water in them.

We kept leaving ours plugged in overnight and flattened the car battery, we tried to remember to unplug it but it's difficult when you've had a relaxing evening

We love our 3 way fridge, it's big and bulky but it's fantastic.

For short stays we just take the coolbox,at Easter we put a bottle of frozen eater in it on Thursday morning ran it every day but switched of at night and when we unpacked on Sunday the bottle was still half ice.

Dont know anything about it but this one goes to 18 below

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When we go away with the classic car and Dandy, we take just a cool box with ice, or put water in the bottom and a damp tea towel over the contents because the fridge is awkward to load in and out of the car, it makes Wayne scared, . Also as the car is 6v an electric cool box wouldn't work to well.

mike wrote:For short stays we just take the coolbox,at Easter we put a bottle of frozen eater in it on Thursday morning ran it every day but switched of at night and when we unpacked on Sunday the bottle was still half ice.

You will have to experiment with the quantity to get the right effect but have you thought of adding a quarter or one half a teaspoon of salt to the water?
It becomes a freeze mixture the ice melts at a slightly lower temperature and keeps the box colder.
Too much salt and the ice melts after a day but try experimenting.
Not too good though as an emergency source of water first thing in the morning if you forgot to fill your water container.
Salt in the water does not improve the taste of tea!

Ok so I went against all the advice and got the halfords coolbox, loaded it up last night and plugged it in. It seems good so far, I put a thermometer in and the airflow is about -10 lol, nothing is frozen yet.

At the end of the day it's whatever suits you best Shaun and I would have probably kept mine if we hadn't kept forgetting to unplug it at nights but then again that would have meant we could have actually put food in it rather than drinks

Helen wrote:At the end of the day it's whatever suits you best Shaun and I would have probably kept mine if we hadn't kept forgetting to unplug it at nights but then again that would have meant we could have actually put food in it rather than drinks

I don't plan on staying anywhere without EHU so hopefully not a problem.

Helen wrote:At the end of the day it's whatever suits you best Shaun.

Totally agreed, there's lots of choice out there to suit everyones needs and requirements, if we were all the same, it would be very boring.