I wanna Electric coolbox for camping!

wilroda

Been looking at these for a while and they seem to vary alot in price and performance. Some appear to be rather noisy too. All very confusing!

Can anyone recommend one that isnt too dear and that would be big enough for the three of us on a camping trip?

samh_2

Hi,

Aldi had these on special offer for £29.99 on Sunday. They still had some today at my local store and the one I bought is working perfectly!

Hope that helps
Sam

john.xs

bought the aldi one and it looks a good piece of kit.there wereabout 15 left in wigan store yesterday a.m

Dani85

Asda have one, 21 or 25 (can't remember which, sorry!)

HelzBelz

Hubby and I have had one for ages, just rememmber they're only an electric coolbox as long as they are plugged in to the car or a battery pack, the rest of the time you still need ice packs in it, so it's not really worth it if you are only going to use it for an hour or so car journey then to use it as a normal coolbox when you get to your destination plus the one we have and most of the ones I've seen seem to have a smaller internal capacity than standard coolboxes, as you have to allow for the coller in the lid.

Rebob

We have the largest of the Halfords ones. It does a good job without too much noise but we have a Combicool 3 way fridge for when we are camping without electric. The combicool works as a fridge when run off electric or gas and works as a cool box when on 12v in the car. Really easy to use and also makes 6 ice cubes for your G&T! Towsure sell it under their name here

bagshaw_2

has anyone tried running a cool box and using a solar charger at the same time? obviously no good over night but good for the daytime?

basill

Rebob wrote: »

The combicool works as a fridge when run off electric or gas and works as a cool box when on 12v in the car. Really easy to use and also makes 6 ice cubes for your G&T! Towsure sell it under their name here

I am looking for a camping fridge too, they seem to go from the £29 electric coolboxes (useless, really only any good for pre chilled stuff)) to very expensive proper portable fridge freezers. Your Combicool looks pretty good (ice!) is it powerfull enough to chill beer and wine reasonably fast? I would be using gas at the campsite.

B

Justin_Scotland

If its the same one Aldi were selling a couple of months ago then this is a very good buy. As its made by Waeco a very respected brand and there usual price is £100+ also its 30l storage capacity is larger than others. It also comes fitted with mains adapter and cigarette adapter where as you sometimes have to buy the other adapters seperately with other coolboxes.

this is a useful link about electric coolboxes v other coolbox types on a camping forum

http://www.ukcampsite.co.uk/chatter/display_topic_threads.asp?ForumID=3&TopicID=157420&PagePosition=4

unrich

Even small cool boxes consume about 3 amps (@12v 36W). Large ones even efficient types consume about 6 to 7A. (72W to 84W).

Have a look at the size of solar panels and what wattage they output. A half decent 60W panel is quite big.

You would have to guarantee that the sun is shining full on the panel with it adjusted to the optimum angles to get the full output.

Lets say I needed 120W of panels to get enough power to run my small cool box. The cool box would cost £30 and the panels (at about £5 for a watt if you're lucky) would be about £600. You would need a good square metre of roof space to catch the sun.

This doesn't include anything like charge controllers, storage batteries, cables, mounting gear, inefficiencies in storage, the weather.

Get a small 3 way fridge box/cool and plug it into the mains as soon as you can.

http://www.force4.co.uk/ProductDetails/mcs/referrer/froogle/productID/5159/groupID/3/categoryID/29
Only 45W consumption but look at the price.

familyfitz

We have the largest one from halfords for camping and have been very pleased with it (had it about 4 years now). Takes plenty of food for the four of us and stays cold even in the warmest of weathers (in Britain - not tried abroad).