From time to time, I stumble onto a good idea or two and this is one of them.
My wife and I were taking a road trip and wanted to take along our ice cooler so that we could have cold drinks and snacks on the trip. Rather than just putting the ice into the cooler and arranging the food around it, I tried a new trick. In the process of robbing the ice cubes out of our refrigerator, I notice that there was a lot of ice in the plastic box that was in the freezer part. Rather than dumping the ice directly into the cooler, I decided to just put the whole box in.
It turned out to be a great idea because none of the items in the cooler got wet or damp from the melting ice. Further, there was no need to drain the water nor was there any chance of a leak of water on the trip, but that was not the best part. With the ice all in the plastic box, the ice lasted twice as long. How could that be you might ask? It all comes down to engineering and heat transfer. Air is a good insulator, so if you can keep air between the cold ice and the warmer sides of the ice chest you don't have as much heat gain. It is not a case of loosing the cold. Cold does not really exist, it is the lack of heat. If you have melted ice or cold water touching directly on the sides of the ice chest, you have significant heat transfer from the warm outside to the cold water and ice in the ice chest and you don't want that. There is even a small air gap between the bottom of the plastic box that contains the cold ice and the bottom surface of the ice chest. This is the area where the most heat gain occurs.
When you drain cold water out of your chest, you are loosing valuable cooling. With the above, you keep the cold water inside the ice chest. There is no need to dump the cold water unless you are concerned about a spill inside your ice chest until all the ice is melted. As long as there is any ice in the plastic box, its total contents is at 32 degrees, so why waste a good thing.
You could do almost the same thing by putting the ice into a plastic bag, but this would eliminate the valuable air gap between the bag and the sides of the ice chest. Next time you load your ice chest try to find a plastic container that you can put your ice in before you put it into your ice chest and I think you will be very satisfied.
PS---This is also a "Green" idea since it saves energy!!
My wife and I were taking a road trip and wanted to take along our ice cooler so that we could have cold drinks and snacks on the trip. Rather than just putting the ice into the cooler and arranging the food around it, I tried a new trick. In the process of robbing the ice cubes out of our refrigerator, I notice that there was a lot of ice in the plastic box that was in the freezer part. Rather than dumping the ice directly into the cooler, I decided to just put the whole box in.
It turned out to be a great idea because none of the items in the cooler got wet or damp from the melting ice. Further, there was no need to drain the water nor was there any chance of a leak of water on the trip, but that was not the best part. With the ice all in the plastic box, the ice lasted twice as long. How could that be you might ask? It all comes down to engineering and heat transfer. Air is a good insulator, so if you can keep air between the cold ice and the warmer sides of the ice chest you don't have as much heat gain. It is not a case of loosing the cold. Cold does not really exist, it is the lack of heat. If you have melted ice or cold water touching directly on the sides of the ice chest, you have significant heat transfer from the warm outside to the cold water and ice in the ice chest and you don't want that. There is even a small air gap between the bottom of the plastic box that contains the cold ice and the bottom surface of the ice chest. This is the area where the most heat gain occurs.
When you drain cold water out of your chest, you are loosing valuable cooling. With the above, you keep the cold water inside the ice chest. There is no need to dump the cold water unless you are concerned about a spill inside your ice chest until all the ice is melted. As long as there is any ice in the plastic box, its total contents is at 32 degrees, so why waste a good thing.
You could do almost the same thing by putting the ice into a plastic bag, but this would eliminate the valuable air gap between the bag and the sides of the ice chest. Next time you load your ice chest try to find a plastic container that you can put your ice in before you put it into your ice chest and I think you will be very satisfied.
PS---This is also a "Green" idea since it saves energy!!
