Electricity -vs- Ice

[Keith]

Hi Dean,

Norman had a cooler like the one you have discribed. He used it for about a year and it worked great. He has two Interstate deep cycle gel cell batteries to opperate it. If I remember right they would last almost two days before the batteries were dead.

The other problem that he had was the cooler ended up developing a crack in one of the coolant lines. I don't think the hard lines were designed to take the bouncing it received riding in the back of the teardrop trailer.

I will have to admit that when driving on Interstate 80 we have a tendancy to travel 70 to 80 mph, (not in California though) so the little bumps give the trailers quite a ride. I been following Norman and have seen his trailer four or five inches off the ground.

I think that the coolers would work great inside a truck where they have a smoother ride.

Keith.

[Guest]

Keith,
That's interesting, because my plan was to use two blue topped Optima batteries.
The CF-35 is portable, so it could ride in the tow vehicle.
They call the RPD-50 a built-in and it might be able to be ordered at a free-standing, but I'm not sure.
My hunch is that the CF-35 should work OK as far as battery usage goes, but it's not too big in the storage department. The RPD-50 is great as far as storage space goes, but I've got my doubts about the battery usage on that one.
Ice sure is starting to look like a fail safe way to go though and I'm sure an ice box could easily be built that would out perform those 5-day ice chests.

Who's Norman?

[John Foote]

Keith,

My hunch is that the CF-35 should work OK as far as battery usage goes, but it's not too big in the storage department. The RPD-50 is great as far as storage space goes, but I've got my doubts about the battery usage on that one.

Curiously, the 50 uses less power than the 35. Different compressor.

http://www.boatelectric.com/waeco_specs.htm

[mikeschn]

I have the Norcold in my other trailer... and it's supposed to be really frugal with propane.

http://www.rvstuffusa.com/322refrigeratorbynorcold.html

But running it on 12vdc, I know it can suck my battery dry in no time flat. Read that as "less than 7 hours"!

I can see 3 different applications, and 3 different ways to keep food cold...

1) Off the grid, like our Safari Photographer... For camping off the grid a propane fridge is great, but a little pricey! (A huge bank of batteries and lots of sunshine would let you do solar refridgeration, for even more money!)

2) Campground camping, where you always have 110v available. A dorm fridge for $50 is all you need.

3) Rustic Weekend camping. An extreme cooler and a couple bags of ice, and you're good to go.

[Keith]

Dean,

Norman a I built our teardrop trailers together. If you check my web site you can see that we built two trailers together. We grew up together and still live about a mile apart.

Keith.

[Larry Messaros]

Dean,

What's shakin' lately? (I guess you're probably to far north to feel it!)

Most of the large RV maunfacturers have gone away from the 3-way fridges back to 2-way (110v and propane). I guess the 12 volt was not reliable enough.

I've found that my little icebox with the ice tray and drain tube worked just great. My next trailer will have the same thing. Even in the hot California temperatures, it stayed quite cold. For the weekends we use the 4 litre (1 gallon) milk jugs and freeze them with filtered water. We then also have nice cool water to drink.

It's simple and cheap. (and just my opinion)

[Guest]

Hey Larry,
If you're refering to an earthquake... Nope I haven't felt one in quite a few months.
I'm really starting to believe that ice is the way to go, unless I want to go out and get one of those Honda generators.... Hey, then I could hook a carnival ride and sell tickets...

Thanks Kai,
For giving me the heads up on Blue Top -vs- Yellow Top.

[Guest]

Welp...
After viewing Guy's thread on building an efficient ice box, I'm all but ready to nix the refer idea.
About the only way I see to have that juice sucker is to have a generator...(More stuff to haul around)
One thing that I haven't heard many teardroppers talk about, is taking there tear drop to a Nascar race. The closest race to me is Sears Point and you can get tickets that would allow you to park your teardrop on the hillside overlooking the track... One of the nice benefits of going to a road course race. A refer with a generator wouldn't cause a noise problem in that environment that's for sure.
You know... I could construct an ice box that could be swapped out with a refer for different types of destinatons...

[Guy]

Ice is the easiest way. When I travel cross-country on my vet circuit I used a 5 day cooler. I took some gallon spring water containers (usually 5 of them) and put them in the freezer overnight. Then I put them in the cooler. As they melted they became my source of cold drinking water on the trips. They lasted more than eight days, at above cooling temperature, and the food was kept really cold throughout the trip. Sure beats the hell out of a 85lb. juice sucking refrigerator that cost 400-700 dollars.

In the postings about a "making your own icebox" http://www.tnttt.com/viewtopic.php?t=2997
the author used one-bread loaf sized block of ice and it lasted four days at cooling temperature.

I liked my self-depleting one gallon jugs better because they do not make a mess. MAKE SURE you use screw top gallon jugs and not the push on Wal-mart ones since the screw on will not come off with shifting nor will they come off with expansion from the freezing process.