It is important to keep your food and drink as fresh as possible when camping. Most caravans, motorhomes and campervans will have a built in fridge that works on 12v whist on the move from the car battery, 240v when pitched up and connected to the site electrical system and a gas option for when no mains electricity is available.
There are a couple of alternative solutions for campers. Many sites will provide a freezer pack service allowing you to change your freezer packs to keep your cool box cold. Electric cool boxes are also very popular as they allow a cool box to run on a 12v cigar lighter socket or a 240v plug. Some of these cool boxes also run on gas. Its important to only run the electric cool box from your car socket for a short time when stationary as it will flatten your car battery.
If you have the version that only runs on 12v then its possible to buy a 240vAC to 12v DC adapter so it can be run from a normal plug via a electric hook-up cable.
There are some limitations with these cool boxes:
- The cool boxes are not great at regulating temperature. They will generally cool the insides by a fixed amount e.g. 21 degrees which will mean in some conditions they will freeze the contents and on hot days they will struggle to cool down enough.
- They are not as efficient as a fridge
Key advantages of the electric cool boxes are:
- They are relatively inexpensive to buy (compare prices of cool boxes)
- They avoid the need to change ice packs
- Some cool boxes have wheels making them portable
- They will keep your food fresh whilst travelling to / from holiday or whilst on a picnic
We have used them as an extra fridge on our camping and caravan holidays and they are a fantastic low cost solution to keeping your food and drink fresh.