Using an esky for a Fridge. « Alternative Technology Assn Forums

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Using an esky for a Fridge.

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Started 7 years ago by John Sheridan
Latest reply from wlb

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John Sheridan
Member

Just wondering if any does this long term, use your mini 12 volt freezer to freeze some 1.25 liter bottles of water and plonk them into your esky and use that as a fridge, just rotate like 4 bottles, so you always have frozen bottles.

Only ask this as I don't want to buy 2 mini fridge/freezers, If I can do it this way would be ok for now.

It's also about room as well the Mini Fridge/freezer I have has a small fridge section, would have more room in the Esky which I have, I think it's like 40 liters.

How cold do you think 2 1.25 liter bottles would get an esky ?

Thanks.

Posted Wednesday 26 Nov 2014 @ 4:53:36 pm from IP #
dreuky
Member

While we were camping for 3 months we used an esky. We used freezer blocks (the blue ones) these worked better than frozen water bottles which we started out with and used less room in the esky. We put the blocks at one end of the esky and put cheese and any frozen goods that we bought next to the blocks and milk and veg etc further away from the blocks. It worked really well never had anything go off. Only problem we had was if we put tomatoes cucumber or alike too close to the blocks and they froze.
We found that when we used frozen water bottles as they were thawing they did not retain their cold even if there was a big frozen ice lump in their middle the sides were not cold enough (maybe the water acted as insulation) The blue blocks remained the same temp until they were almost totally thawed. Being vegetarians we didn't have any meat in our esky so I don't know if meat would be save in this situation

Posted Wednesday 26 Nov 2014 @ 9:06:53 pm from IP #
scott drew
Member

John, salt water freezes at a lower temperature than fresh water. If you put a tea spoon of salt in a 1.25 bottle then fill with water then freeze it it will be colder and also last longer.

Might be worthwhile testing different sized bottles too, along the lines Dreuky suggested with the skinnier containers. Some kids lunch box drink containers are square-ish shaped and filled with salt water may act similar to freezer blocks.

Posted Wednesday 26 Nov 2014 @ 9:19:33 pm from IP #
John Sheridan
Member

I will get some of those blocks and use them, might still use a few water bottles, can drink them, as well when needed

I just want to store some milk,water,cheese,butter marge , beer in it, maybe even some fruit and vegies

Thanks for the suggestions.

Posted Thursday 27 Nov 2014 @ 2:45:57 am from IP #
Buzzman
Member

Also helps to insulate the Esky either with a proprietary zip off cover or just well wrapped with bubble wrap.
Another option is to build a thin ply box with 100m of XPS foam lining it, and keep the Esky in this box.
Whatever blocks you use will last twice as long this way.

Posted Friday 28 Nov 2014 @ 6:03:22 am from IP #
johnmath
Member

It is best practice to freeze your stuff in a proper fridge BEFORE putting in a small portable 12 volt fridge.

The tiny compressor in a portable 12 volt fridge has a limited capacity to remove heat and if you put a couple of freezer packs in it will take many hours to refreeze, meanwhile all of the frozen food which is meant to be at -18 degrees in it could be affected, especially as you will need to do this every day or so.

It would be a lot smarter to buy another 12 portable fridge (maybe a bigger one) an set it at 4 degrees, and keep the smaller one running at -18, and try to buy things already frozen that are going to be put in the "freezer" one.

Posted Friday 28 Nov 2014 @ 6:19:03 am from IP #
John Sheridan
Member

When I get my place going to spend about 2 grand and get a big proper fridge freezer, maybe even a energy efficient chest freezer, if my battery bank is big enough.

I will made do with what I have at the moment.

Posted Friday 28 Nov 2014 @ 3:55:48 pm from IP #
John Sheridan
Member

Was thinking of getting a little thermoelectric cooler, but from what I have been told they are no good, but all I want it to do is good some milk,butter drinks cool, so maybe that would be fine for that.

I might get one, they are cheap, just to test, though not sure how they work, do they turn off an on like a compressor fridge or are on all the time ???

My esky experiment never went very well at all, I think My esky is not very good insulation wise, or I needed to add more ice, never keep it anywhere what I would say cold with one bottle of frozen water bottle.

Posted Saturday 29 Nov 2014 @ 4:45:25 pm from IP #
Bushwalker
Member

Thermoelectric coolers use Peltier devices and are not very efficient. They might suit if you have minimal cooling needs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling

Thermoelectric junctions are about 4 times less efficient in refrigeration applications than conventional means (they offer around 10–15% efficiency of the ideal Carnot cycle refrigerator, compared with 40–60% achieved by conventional compression cycle systems (reverse Rankine systems using compression/expansion).[6]) Due to this lower efficiency, thermoelectric cooling is generally only used in environments where the solid state nature (no moving parts, low maintenance, compact size, and orientation insensitivity) outweighs pure efficiency.

Posted Saturday 29 Nov 2014 @ 9:32:35 pm from IP #
Chip
Member

It may be easier to change lifestyle than to moderate new environment with gadgetry. What about UHT or powdered milk? Do you have a body of water or a creek that beer and margarine can be immersed in (in a water proof bag. Cool nights in Tas so water and other drinks can be stored in esky. Leave lid off overnight, on during daytime.

Posted Saturday 29 Nov 2014 @ 9:46:21 pm from IP #
Greg C
Member

I think this will work if you pick up all the ideas given. Water is not the best medium, the blue block idea which has some salts in to lower the freezing point would be better. Don't confuse them with a potable water source. Much better to have a few of these that are on constant rotation between freezer and esky, vary the number as the seasons change. You will need more than one block in there though. Later Eskys have clip in blocks that clip into lid. Makes sense in that cold air is heavier so warmer air at the top is cooled and falls to the bottom. We find that things work better if we have a block in the bottom and two smaller blocks in the lid. We use this in our shopping trip where the esky lives in the boot of the car and things can be kept cold for at least 7 hours, although mostly things that are already cold are being put in. After 7 hours there is still a little ice in the bottom block. If it is a really hot day we add an extra bottle of ice.

In your situation with the esky fixed it will be easy to site it in a cool location and to improve the insulation. The aim I would think would be to get down to two swaps of blocks every 24 hours.

Posted Saturday 29 Nov 2014 @ 10:30:54 pm from IP #
John Sheridan
Member

I am using UHt Milk and have some powdered milk as well and when I open a 1 liter milk I put it into two small 300ml bottles, so everything fits ok as long as I don't go crazy.

Just have to put stuff in bottles and have one bottle in the fridge area and the rest frozen and ready to use when needed put it in the fridge area, a lot more work, but do able

Got my marge frozen and a little container I fill up when needed in the fridge area. When I do that I have room for a couple cans of coke their as well.

Good practice for when I get on the road and to my eventual place. Then I will buy a bigger proper fridge/freezer and use this for a standalone fridge or freezer.

Posted Sunday 30 Nov 2014 @ 6:53:03 am from IP #
Buzzman
Member

I spent six months living in a shed several years ago, and using blue freezer blocks chilled in the domestic freezer of the main house to keep a stnard 40L Esky cool.

I had 8 blocks and rotated them 4 and 4 each day.

I kept meat in the main freezer but the Esky was fine for milk, butter, bread etc etc.

If I was doing it again I'd use additional insulation around the Esky 'box' to help prevent heat bleeding in.

Posted Tuesday 3 Mar 2015 @ 1:53:15 am from IP #
John Sheridan
Member

Been googleing about Ice Houses and it seems they were the rage back in the old days, they used to cut big blocks in winter and the ice would last right though summer, lots of sawdust and insulation worked back then

Would take a while to make me some 20kg blocks of ice with my 12 volt 30l freezer

Posted Tuesday 3 Mar 2015 @ 7:17:27 pm from IP #
John Sheridan
Member

About how cold can you get an Esky with just ice, I can only seem to get it to 10c, which is fine for getting my coke cold, but esky is pretty pathetic insulation wise, would more insulation allow it to get colder or just stay at 10c longer ?

Thanks.

Posted Wednesday 6 May 2015 @ 3:40:52 am from IP #
Buzzman
Member

Insulation is the key, and solid ice is better for keeping temps lower than granular, cubed, or crushed ice.

The latter is the fastest to chill something down, as there is a greater surface area for heat to transfer.

Someone with better physics than I can no doubt provide a technical explanation.....

But the bottom line is, you should be able to get at least as cold as the ice itself, which ought ob be a bit less than zero C.

Posted Wednesday 6 May 2015 @ 4:02:39 am from IP #
John Sheridan
Member

I am just using those liquid filled plastic ice bricks, maybe i needs more more in it to get better cooling.

Will have to get a better esky to test with.

Thanks for the info.

Posted Thursday 7 May 2015 @ 12:10:30 am from IP #
Buzzman
Member

My experience is that the ice bricks need longer to freeze down than block ice, so perhaps freeze Tupperware containers of the 1kg size and try with them. I often find I have to leave the blue bricks in the freezer for a few days to get them 'hard frozen' whereas water freezes overnight.

What you have to recognise is that you need far more ice than you think.

To experiment properly you need at least 50mm thickness of foam insulation, and 75 or 100mm is better.

This is what has been found to work in boats.

Also, if you have an Esky in a vehicle, remember that once the A/C is turned off, the interior temperature rises rapidly and Uni of Texas experiments have shown that in 30degC exterior temp the interior can reach over 50degC and as much as 90degC.

Ice doesn't last long at 30, never mind 50degC and fuggedabout 90degC!

There was a fascinating special on SBS or ABC recently about the guy who pioneered block ice transportation from the US to Europe in the early 19thC, and who went on to pioneer refrigeration.

Posted Thursday 7 May 2015 @ 12:46:41 am from IP #
wlb
Member

Buzzman said:There was a fascinating special on SBS or ABC recently about the guy who pioneered block ice transportation from the US to Europe in the early 19thC, and who went on to pioneer refrigeration.

Yes, I watch that and waited in anticipation for them to include James Harrison. But not entirely unexpectedly, he didn't rate a mention. It was of course all invented in America.
http://www.cv.vic.gov.au/stories/a-diverse-state/james-harrison-journalist-inventor-visionary/james-harrison-journalist-inventor-visionary/

Posted Friday 8 May 2015 @ 1:09:53 pm from IP #
Buzzman
Member

Well, no, why would they, it was about Frederic Tudor the original ice-baron.....

There were other pioneers of refrigeration than Jim Harrison, many of them much more successful, such as the Frenchman Carré, whose ammonia-based method became the default standard, and is still used today as the basis of 3-way refrigerators running on gas and electricity (grid and battery)suhc as those on boats and in RVs and caravans.

Harrison's contribution was the compression and evaporator plate method, still used today in all other forms of refrigeration, but not recognised at the time.

Initially, the ice distribution system was set up to house huge blocks distributed to large houses, and eventually, competition drove the price down so that the middle classes could afford ice for drinks and ice cream and keeping fresh food chilled in 'ice boxes'.

Ice was shipped from Boston to Bombay and even to Melbourne and Sydney..!!

Because of the competition, the price of ice got to a few cents a pound, and due to the high price of coal required to fire the boilers that drove the 'ice-making *machines*', they were unable to compete on price.....making ice....

So it wasn't until efficiencies in the process, and the conversion to electric power later in the 19th C that 'refrigeration' (ie: mechanical cooling of the *air*) really took over from ice as the cheapest means of refrigeration, at least for commercial shipping, not so much households, as the modern 'fridge' didn't come into being until the twenties, really.

Except during the US Civil War, when Northern ice supplies were barred from Southern ports, and Carré's ice making machines briefly took over as the Southern supplier of (somewhat comparatively expensive) ice. After the war the block ice trade re-opened and killed off the machine-made ice.

As this thread is about ice-cooling, mention of Tudor was appropriate, whereas objecting to non-mention of Harrison is not, in context.

Nonetheless a good point, and the Geelong Museum has loads on one of it's most famous businessmen.

Fascinating subject, refrigeration, mainly because, as any good Aussie should know, it's ALL ABOUT THE BEER..!!!!!!

ROTFL

Posted Saturday 9 May 2015 @ 2:34:43 am from IP #
wlb
Member

I wasn't objecting to the omission of Harrison. It was just that apart from a fairly brief mention of Carre and a fleeting mention of Carrier, it gave the impression that refrigeration as we know it today, is all due to Tudor. It then made me wonder how much of the material in the other episodes was accredited disproportionately to the person being covered.

An interesting series, nevertheless.

Posted Saturday 9 May 2015 @ 4:48:20 am from IP #
Buzzman
Member

Yeah, I figured that's what you meant, but from the point of view of *popularising* the notion of the availability of ice, and thus refrigeration per se, it's not so great a leap.

It was clearly his efforts in popularising the *use* of ice in places that previously did not have access to it, and of driving down the price (mainly in order to bankrupt competitors)that he was successful in making it a general 'desirability' to have ice and eventually refrigeration as a 'norm' not simply as a curiousity.

In that sense, he was perhaps the "father" of refrigeration, even if not the only inventive person in the field. It's clear that he followed previous work by Oliver Evans and Jacob Perkins who had both previously produced vapour-compression refrigeration systems using ether.

I think it's fair to say that his popularising of ice lead directly to the mechanical innovations he, Carré, Carrier and Harrison pioneered.

They may have arrived anyway, especially given Harrison's desire to use refrigeration for transporting Australian perishables back to Europe, and it was certainly Carrier who was most innovative in this area in the USA.

But without the energy and drive of Tudor in 'breaking the ground' and popularising the idea, it may have taken far far longer for 'the domestic fridge' to appear.

Given the fact that Americans call the fridge an 'icebox' - based on the fact that at least fifty years of domestic 'iceboxes' preceded the introduction of the the first stand alone domestic refrigerator, the Frigidaire, in 1923 - it's clear that the ice came first, and was popularised and became a 'necessity' that in turn lead to innovations in efficiency, size and so on.

A doco on refrigeration that focused on Harrison, in contrast, would be remiss if it did not mention Tudor's efforts as it was his shipping of ice to Mombay and Melbourne, thus developing a 'market' for ice wher enone had previously existed, that gave Harrison the idea of producing ice locally, and his fortuitous location in the printing works that connected the dots with ether as refrigerant.

It's a bit chicken and egg, but I hope you can see what I mean. From a global perspective, Harrison is a footnote. An early adopter whose idea was ahead of its time.

Misguided pioneer rather than successful businessman. Tudor is by far the more historically relevant - especially in light of the original topic of this thread - keeping food cold using ice in an Esky.

Ice, not refrigeration. Tudor, not Harrison.

Posted Saturday 9 May 2015 @ 5:19:11 am from IP #
wlb
Member

Yes, I suppose so. Good point.
Incidentally, the iceman still did the rounds of the suburbs when I was a kid in the '50s. The ice pick was one of the standard kitchen implements.

Posted Saturday 9 May 2015 @ 12:43:43 pm from IP #
Buzzman
Member

Wow! Here in Oz? I didn't know that.

I remember the 'Coolgardie safe' in the outback - the hanging perforated box with fly mesh and hessian bagging over it, and doused with water to keep the meat for a day or three...

Posted Sunday 10 May 2015 @ 12:51:37 am from IP #
wlb
Member

I remember Mum chipping ice from a block and I remember the horse-drawn ice cart coming down the street, and roughly what it looked like. I can remember the large cantilevered ice-block tongs that the iceman used to lift and carry the slippery blocks. You could buy a half block and he could cut a block with a few deft blows of his big pick. It would just crack where he wanted it to, like cutting glass. I also remember him sometime chipping off bits to give to kids to suck on hot days.

Judging by the mental images I have, and the lack of other general recollections of an icebox at home, my guess is that I was quite young. I was born at the beginning of 1950, so I'd guess that in our area at least, the iceman had gone and the electric fridge had arrived in the average house by 1954, perhaps 1955. Definitely no later.

There were iceworks scattered through the suburbs. They also offered cold storage. They survived for decades afterwards by switching to bagged crushed ice. The small ones either grew or disappeared.

This has reminded me how ideally suited the horse-drawn vehicle was to urban delivery. The ice-cart, the baker's van, the milkman's van, and the rubbish-cart were all pulled by draughthorses. Daily home bread deliveries probably ceased in the early '60s; by then motorized. I think they were Austin, Morris or Commer vans like the PMG used for mail pick-up from street letterboxes. They were forward-control and had sliding front doors which the driver left open as it made getting in and out easier with the frequent stopping. You could leave a note for the baker, and the money, in your meter box near the front door, and he would leave the bread.

I still remember the name of our dustman, so I suspect the horse-drawn cart persisted until the late '50s or early '60s. The rubbish bin was called a dustbin back then. This became rubbish bin in the '60s and later, sometimes garbage bin. (Certainly never trash can!)

Milk deliveries occurred between about 1am and dawn and were horse-drawn in our area right up until home deliveries ceased in the early '70s. You put the empty pint bottles just inside the front gate with the correct change in one of the bottles. The milky (milkman) simply leaned over the gate and replaced the empties with the same number of full bottles. If you were still awake late on a clear night, and you had a window open, you knew roughly what time it was when you heard the clip-clop of the horse shoes coming down the street. In our neighbourhood, this was about 2am.
And then there was the "night-cart", before the area was sewered. They didn't always come at night. This is why there are so many very narrow lanes running between streets behind house blocks in many older suburbs. It was so the nightman didn't have to come through to the backyard dunny from the front of the property. Nice and discrete.

The advantage of the horse is that it's like a robotic vehicle. The milkman, baker, or dustmen, just walks from house to house, and the horse and cart are always in the right place at the right time.

Posted Sunday 10 May 2015 @ 2:13:53 am from IP #
Buzzman
Member

I must have lived in a better class of suburb..... LOL

Seriously, I was born at the beginning of the sixties, so have no recall of horses, but I do remember the baker, the veggie man and the milko. And our northern suburb was sewered when built, not retro-fitted as so much of Sydney was in the Fifties and Sixties.

Some suburbs still had milko home delivery in the early nineties, but the supermarkets killed them off, they only do commercial deliveries nowadays.

The baker and the veggie man stopped coming when I was pretty young, so late sixties, early seventies.

But you're right about the horse being a better power source, as the milko needed two people, one to drive, one to drop off.

We still had the dustbin men right up until the eighties when they switched from metal and plastic dustbins to the wheeled Sulo bins and the one-man garbage truck.

Posted Sunday 10 May 2015 @ 6:42:57 am from IP #
wlb
Member

The difference between the early '50s and the '60s, or even the late '50s, was enormous. You have to remember that nothing much changed during the war so the late '40s and early '50s in some respects weren't that different from the early '40s or late '30s.
The changes that occurred between my pre school age and when I was in say grade 2 were massive. I remember Dad taking me to the station to watch a steam loco being turned around on the huge turntable. We would walk past a blacksmith's workshop beside houses on the way to the shops in the centre of town. The telephone exchange was manual. You picked up the receiver and a telephonist asked what number you wanted. Men walked or rode bicycles to work, because not everyone had a car. But by the time I started primary school, all this had gone. There was a petrol station (Mobilgas) where the blacksmith had been, diesel locos had replaced steam on the non-electrified lines (we were at the outer end of the suburb electric railway line), and the PMG had built a new automatic exchange.

How on earth did we drift off onto this subject?!

Posted Sunday 10 May 2015 @ 7:55:18 am from IP #
Buzzman
Member

Yes, it was time of great change, the immediate post-war period.

I recall that it struck me as odd when we moved form the city to the country in the early 70's and the local exchange was a party line, and you had to wind a handle a certain number of turns to get the attention of another user on the party line, and called an operator to get an outside line.

This was superceded with an automatic exchange while we lived there in '74-'75.

I remember Mum telling me about when her family got their first car, a 2nd-hand Morris, in the late '50s, and the pride with which my sea-captain grandfather displayed the first NEW car, a Simca Aronde in the early Sixties, later replaced by his retirement car, a late-sixties Volvo Amazon. Now that was lovely thing.

Off topic, sure, but that's the way things go on the internet.....there's even a term for it, not that I can remember what that term is... lol

Posted Monday 11 May 2015 @ 6:43:49 am from IP #
wlb
Member

Ah, the good ol' days.

Posted Tuesday 12 May 2015 @ 12:13:09 am from IP #

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