Menu
I hate to buy the additional bags of ice for my coolers during camping trips. Everybody hates that, it’s annoying.
So, I found my way to “How to keep my cooler cold when camping at least 5 days” and succeed somehow.
Here are the tricks. Save money, save time and they’re not rocket science!
The price of these coolers are high but they are worth your extra dollars. They are durable and keep cold up to 10 days. Check the video on youtube at here if you’re wondering whether the claim is true.
Invest in the high-performance coolers and you can use it in many years later – the cheap coolers are fragile and easily broken after just several camping trips.
The best high-end cooler brands you should consider first are YETI, RTIC, Pelican, Engel, Grizzly.
If you want the best camping cooler for the money, I highly recommended Coleman Extreme. It is the best bang for the buck.
The key of second trick is using big block of ice (or ice block). Don’t get the little ice cubes which are sold everywhere because the big ice block melt slower since they have less air-contacting surface.
* You may need cubed ice for cocktails during camping trip 🙂
You can buy the big ice block or make them at home by yourself – It is simple. You just add water to plastic container, cover it with lid and then put in your freezer.
Note: It depends on the size of the ice block that it will take several hours to days to freeze completely.
How to make block of ice at home
Last year, in preparation for a week camping trip, I made my own 4 big block of ice for cooler – my cooler is Coleman 62 qt. Xtreme Cooler. They lasted 5 days and kept the foods fresh the entire trips as I expected.
The Coleman 62 qt. Xtreme Cooler is good, but I think I’m going to buy another one better for my family camping in this year since we’re gonna camp longer and more frequent.
If you don’t like a cooler with full of melted ice water, getting some bottled frozen water to replace block ice is a good idea.
You just have to do is simply use plastic bottles, fill water and freeze them in freezer.
Here are some benefits of using bottles of frozen water:
Note: I highly recommend you use big bottled frozen water because they take much longer to melt.
Personally, I don’t like dry ice. Although dry ice is awesome and keeps your cooler really colder and longer than the regular ice, it is carbon dioxide (CO2) gas – not good for health.
If you use dry ice, here are some things you need to follow:
You can put dry ice and normal ice in a cooler together, that’s quite effective. The dry ice keeps the block ice out of melting longer.
However, the dry ice produces much carbon dioxide gas inside the cooler, the pressure of gas increases and finally, it may causes your cooler to burst open at the lid. That’s when a cooler can’t fulfill its purpose.
But don’t worry, that accident rarely happens unless you use too much dry ice in a cooler. Moreover, during your opening and closing the cooler, the carbon dioxide gas will get out of the cooler.
So, how much dry ice should you have in a cooler? Let’s me take an example, you can use 30 pounds of dry ice for 60qt cooler without worrying about carbon dioxide gas pressure.
Remember:
I hope you like these tricks and clear about “How to keep my cooler cold when camping at least 5 days”.
Please provide any comments/ suggestions below.