Boondocking Ice Chest (Enhanced with Reflectix)

Jim, I did not realize that the block ice is not kept at the same temp as a home freezer! I should add that we also use "home made" block ice -- we freeze water in partially filled 2 liter bottles. (Don't fill them all the way before freezing -- leave some room for expansion.) The bottles make it easier to pack the food -- they are not too big, and they fit sideways across the width of the cooler. Plus, we fill the bottles with high quality water from our home water purification system, rather than our lousy tap water -- so when the ice melts, we have quite a bit of good water to drink while camping.

We have done the covering with blankets and towels etc which really seems to help. Our setup is always inside the truck bed with the folding panel bed cover in place...

We also fill the 5-day ice chest with ice and use a small 2-3 inch plastic snap container sitting on the top of the ice for the things we don't want to get water logged.

We do rather well with our 5-day ice chest for keeping ice... Keeping the ice chest out of the direct sunlight is the big answer for us.

My 5-day ICE CHEST sits next to our generator in the tailgate corner of the truck bed for easy access... You can just see the extra blanket covering the top of the ice chest in this photo... The generator is only pulled out for three hours aday usully at 8AM each day with the most of the time the tailgate and top bed panels are closed up and locked.


Roy Ken

A few things

We make our ice in gallon or half gallon jugs and they are kept in the bottom of a deep freeze. They last longer than commercial ice and doesn't melt and flood the food.

If you are buying ice then take it home and toss it in your freezer for a day. They store ice at a higher temp and it will melt faster than if you let it get even colder in your freezer.

I do the following on our river trips:
- cover the top of the ice chest with a white, wet, towel over an insulating cover.
- inside the ice chest, cover the top of most of the food with a reflextix type space blanket with our lunch on top. So when I open the ice chest in hot weather at lunch, we don't let in a lot of hot air.
- a full ice chest is a happy ice chest
- if the ice chest won't be opened for a week or more, duct tape the seal closed.
- use block ice rather than cubes.
- make my own block ice in my freezer rather than use the commercially available stuff which is just compacted crushed ice anyway.
- while traveling to the river, wrap the ice chest in a sleeping bag.
- pre-cool both ice chest and food before loading


Steve

DH just wrapped ours in a solar blanket....:) Might do the reflectix with tape...would look better AND stay on better! thanks for the hint!

I read about this some time back and they said it worked too. if you are out int he woods or the desert, and it works, more power to you. who cares how it looks. results are the answer.