Rotomolded cooler and dry ice for 4-5 days

[jeromedawg]

Hey all,

Going glamping and camping (2 nights of glamping and 1 night of camping) and have a 45qt rotomolded cooler where I'll need to keep items frozen/slowly defrosting to cold (for a few lbs of raw meat primarily). I'd probably say to be safe we would want to have enough ice to keep things pretty cold for 4-5 days though. I was thinking about just getting some dry ice and putting that at the bottom, placing the food in and pouring regular ice on top. Is this overkill? Less amounts of dry ice should keep things as cold, if not colder than, as more amounts of regular ice, right?

I haven't given a ton of thought to this and have little experience with coolers and camping so was curious to get some advice and suggestions on how to go about properly provisioning for and packing a cooler so that it would last 4-5 days keeping things between 30-40F (I think this would be a 'safe' temp range).

[Fishindude]

I prefer frozen milk jugs.   Keep the cooler in the shade, someplace cool as possible, cover with a tarp or sleeping bag and don't open it any more than you have to.

[jeromedawg]

I prefer frozen milk jugs.   Keep the cooler in the shade, someplace cool as possible, cover with a tarp or sleeping bag and don't open it any more than you have to.

Yea, those are great but with this rotomolded cooler I don't have a ton of space either :( How many milk jugs do you typically load? Do you figure one per X lbs of food?

[APowers]

Blocks of ice keep cold longer than crushed/cubes, hence why frozen milk jugs are great (I have a couple 2L soda bottles to serve the same purpose, though milk jugs are closer to ideal). I have a cheapo Igloo 40?qt that I took on our epic road/camping trip this summer (in the hot SW region), I took up about half the volume of the cooler with three frozen 2L bottles, plus the equivalent of 2-3 more with smaller frozen bottles and gel icepacks. It stayed cold for about three and a half days in the back of my truck (so pretty warm due to greenhousing, but mostly shaded, and minimal access-- 4x/day).

A huge advantage of having your ice in frozen jugs of some kind is that when it melts, you don't have your food floating in an icecube soup.

If you can start with everything in your cooler frozen solid, and half of the cooler volume can be ice in some form, I'd expect to get a good 4+ days out of it. Especially if the cooler can be in a shaded/conditioned space.

If at all possible, have a separate cooler for drinks/snacks-- that way you're not constantly opening your perishables cooler to let the cold out.

[LostGirl]

I had to look up what kind of cooler that is, it's a yeti style. We go camping with friends that have a yeti. It will freeze things that are not frozen, with regular ice and we have gone on a three night camping trip and they never needed to top up their ice. I would think dry ice would be overkill and everything in your cooler may freeze..

[Fishindude]

I had to look up what kind of cooler that is, it's a yeti style. We go camping with friends that have a yeti. It will freeze things that are not frozen, with regular ice and we have gone on a three night camping trip and they never needed to top up their ice. I would think dry ice would be overkill and everything in your cooler may freeze..

Had to chuckle at this one.   
Sorry, but no way on earth are you going to be able to put something in a cooler with ice, unfrozen, then pull it out frozen later .... unless you are camping in below freezing conditions.

I've got a yeti and they are really nothing special.  They are insulated well and heavy duty as heck but I don't find mine keeps ice much longer than my good Coleman cooler.   My Yeti usually stays in the garage because it is ungodly heavy.   The whole trick to making ice last is keeping the coolers in the shade and don't open and close them too often.

[MayDay]

My brother has a Yeti and he put dry ice in it.

He froze everything in the cooler and a bunch of stuff was ruined.

So experiment ahead of time with the right amount of dry ice, or just use regular ice.

[jeromedawg]

I had to look up what kind of cooler that is, it's a yeti style. We go camping with friends that have a yeti. It will freeze things that are not frozen, with regular ice and we have gone on a three night camping trip and they never needed to top up their ice. I would think dry ice would be overkill and everything in your cooler may freeze..

Had to chuckle at this one.   
Sorry, but no way on earth are you going to be able to put something in a cooler with ice, unfrozen, then pull it out frozen later .... unless you are camping in below freezing conditions.

I've got a yeti and they are really nothing special.  They are insulated well and heavy duty as heck but I don't find mine keeps ice much longer than my good Coleman cooler.   My Yeti usually stays in the garage because it is ungodly heavy.   The whole trick to making ice last is keeping the coolers in the shade and don't open and close them too often.

Yea the Otterbox is a friggin chore to lug around AND it's bulky lol.  Only reason I got it was because it was on sale for like $120 or something (and now that I think about it, that's still expensive for a cooler but the lowest price at least for this model), so I may just sell it at some point and get one of those Ozark Trail coolers from Walmart later down the road. We're not doing any sort of hiking in, etc so everything will be kept close to the car.

[BussoV6]

Big difference between dry ice and regular ice. Dry ice starts at below -70 deg C, while regular ice, at best, is probably starting at -18 or 20 deg C.

When camping, try and keep the cooler box in the shade, covered with a wet towel.

[WSUCoug1994]

One of the best things you can do for any cooler - is to cool it before actually using it.  pack it full of ice 1-2 days before you plan on filling it.  That will dramatically improve the performance of the cooler.

[ChickenStash]

One handy thing is to save the ice packs that come from places like Omaha steaks, Blue Apron, etc. if you happen to come across them. They are usually reusable, leak-resistant (more than a ziplock bag, anyway) and can lay thin/flat when freezing to maximize cooler space. I have a couple I keep in the freezer for outings just throw them on top of whatever I have in my cheap Coleman cooler. Keeps things chilled for at least a day, probably longer but I haven't tried.

[LostGirl]

I had to look up what kind of cooler that is, it's a yeti style. We go camping with friends that have a yeti. It will freeze things that are not frozen, with regular ice and we have gone on a three night camping trip and they never needed to top up their ice. I would think dry ice would be overkill and everything in your cooler may freeze..

Had to chuckle at this one.   
Sorry, but no way on earth are you going to be able to put something in a cooler with ice, unfrozen, then pull it out frozen later .... unless you are camping in below freezing conditions.

I've got a yeti and they are really nothing special.  They are insulated well and heavy duty as heck but I don't find mine keeps ice much longer than my good Coleman cooler.   My Yeti usually stays in the garage because it is ungodly heavy.   The whole trick to making ice last is keeping the coolers in the shade and don't open and close them too often.

It was milk so it was already chilled. I mean it was icy, not frozen solid so my friend probably over iced the cooler but it def changed state...

[robartsd]

I'm not sure how much more effective dry ice would be over regular ice at keeping things cool for an extended period. Strictly looking at how much energy it takes to vaporize the dry ice (571 J/g, 913 J/cm^3) vs melt ice (334 J/g, 306 J/cm^3) shows that it can absorb a lot more heat.  Since it vaporizes below -78 C and the expansion to CO2 gas requires venting, that extra heat absorbing capacity of dry ice cannot be used as efficiently at keeping things cold for extended periods of time as the heat absorbing capacity of water ice can. Of course if the need is to keep something frozen solid, water ice just wont cut it.

[Retire-Canada]

Dry ice is good for keeping frozen things frozen a long time. It sublimates to CO2 gas from a solid so allow the gas to escape or the cooler will explode. For week long trips what I have done is loaded a cooler with dry ice and frozen items in alternating layers. Then once a day I take out the items at the top of the "freezer" cooler and move them to my day use cooler that I open all day long as needed. The frozen items act like ice in the day use cooler and the "freezer" cooler stays frozen a long time. You can easily get frostbite touching dry ice with bare hands so you want to keep that cooler away from kids and drunk people.

If you have a high efficiency Yeti style cooler and you are only away for 2 nights you don't need dry ice. Pre-cool the cooler before you load it. Use a reasonable amount of ice in the cooler...possibly using some items you can freeze as ice. You'll come home with stuff still cold and have ice leftover.

[StashingAway]

One of the best things you can do for any cooler - is to cool it before actually using it.  pack it full of ice 1-2 days before you plan on filling it.  That will dramatically improve the performance of the cooler.

1-2 days?!

That's not how thermodynamics work ;). Unless you have a cooler made out of 4" of cast iron.

[robartsd]

One of the best things you can do for any cooler - is to cool it before actually using it.  pack it full of ice 1-2 days before you plan on filling it.  That will dramatically improve the performance of the cooler.

1-2 days?!

That's not how thermodynamics work ;). Unless you have a cooler made out of 4" of cast iron.

Yes, pre-chilling an hour or two before packing would be as effective as pre-chilling a couple of days.