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Can you use a coolbox in the water as a fridge?


Tara1234

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5 hours ago, mross said:

Butter may do no harm, but what evidence is there that it is actually 'good for you'?  Is any food actually 'good for you'???  I accept that a balanced diet is beneficial.

I doubt if any, single food is 'good for you' unless you are lacking in something to begin with.  In the same way, exercise is good for you but only up to a limit.  If you walk twenty miles a day, a bike ride is not 'good for you' as it will not add anything.

I Believe that the general consensus is that going without is somewhat unhealthy.

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In the 1970's we used a four-bottle  milk crate lowered into the cut on a bit string. The  length was fairly critical to avoid canal water getting around the top - whether the bottle was open or not.  Sometimes it was overlooked when the boat was on the move so it created its own bow wave.

The rather odd thing is that its seemed to make no difference to the life of the milk.

The evaporation cooler we had (elsewhere) was known by its brand name - the Osocool - and did maintain a few degrees below ambient.  But there was no room for such luxuries on the boat.

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31 minutes ago, Tacet said:

 

The evaporation cooler we had (elsewhere) was known by its brand name - the Osocool - and did maintain a few degrees below ambient.  But there was no room for such luxuries on the boat.

 

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I had a Saturday  job in a supermarket (would be called a mini market these days,  but that's shop inflation for you) in the late 1960's. 

Every Saturday the dairy produce man came, inspected the yogurts for signs of "blown" lids, and by tapping the top and judging from the resulting sound, how long the rest would last before the top blew.

He would then wipe of the "use by" date and, using a hand held date stamper, would stamp a new date on it. Shop staff inspected the yogurt display twice a day and removed any yogurts showing signs of blowing. The dairy produce man swapped these for new stock.

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Make a hatch in the kitchen floor, remove the ballast, fit spacers so that the hatch can be replaced level with the floor. Fit it with a plastic tray and you have a cool compartment below the water line that will store milk, spread and the like for 2-3 days. if you have a dry bilge, and the engine is not too close, the counter may be suitable. Old boatmen of my acquaintance always used this method.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Back to butter... is it good for you... well, you need some fat both to get fat soluble vitamins and to make vital hormones, which is why cutting down too much makes you miserable as well as unhealthy. Saturated fat and dietary cholesterol isn't nearly as bad for you as they thought in the eighties, while artificially hydrogenated ones (hardened vegetable oils) are much, much worse. So... butter isn't as bad for you as many other things and it's NICE so yes indeed, lots and lots of people do use it.

The downside of course is that it won't spread when cold, which is very frustrating on the boat when the ambient temperature is below about 15C .

When I was a child my mother used to keep the butter in the oven, where the pilot light kept it soft. This was fine except on the numerous occasions she forgot to take it out before turning the oven on.

I keep butter out of the fridge and sometimes have some on the go for weeks at a time, and it doesn't seem to go off at all.

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1 hour ago, Chertsey said:

I keep butter out of the fridge and sometimes have some on the go for weeks at a time, and it doesn't seem to go off at all.

Ditto, except that a half pound (or whatever it is these days, 250g?) generally lasts less than 2 weeks in our house. Sometimes only a week. 

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13 hours ago, WotEver said:

Ditto, except that a half pound (or whatever it is these days, 250g?) generally lasts less than 2 weeks in our house. Sometimes only a week. 

I find 250g would last me 3-6 months if it didn't go off!  Wish they did 100g versions!

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20 minutes ago, Robbo said:

I find 250g would last me 3-6 months if it didn't go off!  Wish they did 100g versions!

I very rarely buy any sort of spread but when i do it will be butter and a pack will just last a weekend between 2 of us :)

It is a very rare treat though

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I read the BBC website every week to discover what is bad for me this week and what is ok this week that was bad for me last week. Currently it is Sunflower Oil that is being put to the torch and Olive Oil is our hero. I have no trouble stretching a pat of butter to cover a whole slice of toast and until then I keep it in the fridge. It is easier to use if you cut slices of butter to put on the toast rather than trying to spread it.

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3 hours ago, system 4-50 said:

I read the BBC website every week to discover what is bad for me this week and what is ok this week that was bad for me last week. Currently it is Sunflower Oil that is being put to the torch and Olive Oil is our hero. I have no trouble stretching a pat of butter to cover a whole slice of toast and until then I keep it in the fridge. It is easier to use if you cut slices of butter to put on the toast rather than trying to spread it.

Now you're talking my language there...a nice slice of butter on a thick slice of fresh bread turned red hot toast, each slice cut as and when required....these people who butter toast cold to avoid too much melted or to make the spread(!?) go further.... never understood it. Not an every day luxury but thT Sat and/or Sun morning slow breakfast :D

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Cold box with a bag of ice cubes in the bottom (75p - £1 per day) replaced each day.

Then there is the bush fridge, Cover the opening with hessian and place a bowl of water on top with lengths of hessian hang down the side of box with one end in the bowl. The evaporation of the water in the hessian cools the contents of the box. Normally it would be hanged  from a tree. Something put together at Scout camp on Brownsea Island.

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On 5/26/2017 at 18:24, The Grumpy Triker said:

Now you're talking my language there...a nice slice of butter on a thick slice of fresh bread turned red hot toast, each slice cut as and when required....these people who butter toast cold to avoid too much melted or to make the spread(!?) go further.... never understood it. Not an every day luxury but thT Sat and/or Sun morning slow breakfast :D

When I was a lad we always had whole bread, perhaps ready-sliced hadn't been invented? In any case my dad always buttered the end of the loaf and then cut the buttered slice off. I don't remember my mother doing this, she used the conventional slice and then butter method.

Can't recall how things were kept cool, we certainly didn't have a fridge till I was 8 or 9.

Edited by frahkn
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6 hours ago, frahkn said:

Can't recall how things were kept cool, we certainly didn't have a fridge till I was 8 or 9.

Probably in the pantry? (Which would also contain a large stone (or concrete) shelf for keeping meat cool.)

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8 hours ago, frahkn said:

When I was a lad we always had whole bread, perhaps ready-sliced hadn't been invented? In any case my dad always buttered the end of the loaf and then cut the buttered slice off. I don't remember my mother doing this, she used the conventional slice and then butter method.

Can't recall how things were kept cool, we certainly didn't have a fridge till I was 8 or 9.

Your older than me then, as I use to walk up to the village bakery to get fresh bread and they put it through the slicing machine while I waited. If I was to early the bread was to fresh and wouldn't cut so I had to do two trips

1 hour ago, WotEver said:

Probably in the pantry? (Which would also contain a large stone (or concrete) shelf for keeping meat cool.)

Same, the posh houses had marble

 

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10 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Your older than me then, as I use to walk up to the village bakery to get fresh bread...

Whenever I was given this task the smell would win over my lack of self-discipline and the bread always ended up at the house with a small hole in one end. 

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1 hour ago, ditchcrawler said:

Your older than me then, as I use to walk up to the village bakery to get fresh bread and they put it through the slicing machine while I waited. If I was to early the bread was to fresh and wouldn't cut so I had to do two trips

Same, the posh houses had marble

 

Dad would drive us to the nearest village with a bakery every Saturday morning - well when the car worked - and we had two fresh baked white and one real full on wholemeal.....one of the white loaves had gone before we got home, 3 kiddies in the back...half the crust and middle gone , the rest only the middle. Mum used to do a spot cheese and mince beef filling for tea.....hmmmm.

no slicing machines in our village bakery.....doorstops have to be done by hand :D

....a mate's Dad used to do that butter and slice thing!...no idea why, there must be something to it..

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26 minutes ago, The Grumpy Triker said:

Dad would drive us to the nearest village with a bakery every Saturday morning - well when the car worked - and we had two fresh baked white and one real full on wholemeal.....one of the white loaves had gone before we got home, 3 kiddies in the back...half the crust and middle gone , the rest only the middle. Mum used to do a spot cheese and mince beef filling for tea.....hmmmm.

no slicing machines in our village bakery.....doorstops have to be done by hand :D

....a mate's Dad used to do that butter and slice thing!...no idea why, there must be something to it..

I recon its a Dad thing because mine used to do it as well

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33 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

We use to get fresh butter from two sisters in the village, I don't know how many cows they had, it was always sparkling in the light probably due to the salt in it.

That sounds mmmmmmm.....white bread and butter and salt are all back in vogue again and healthy ...so they say! :clapping::cheers:

not that I fully stopped any of them.

16 minutes ago, tree monkey said:

I recon its a Dad thing because mine used to do it as well

I think I will have to try it!?....get back to doorstops I say! :)

Edited by The Grumpy Triker
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  • 2 months later...

Just in case you or others are still struggling to keep your beers cool!

'Proper' refigeration needn't be expensive, or use a lot of '12 volt', or even be too big in size.

Gas (propane/butane) fridges may give you safety concerns and Peltier fridges (cheap cool box type) will be a heavy drain on your battery, which only leaves compressor fridges as an energy efficient alternative. The main issue with these is that 12 volt versions tend to be many hundreds of pounds and they are not as well insulated as a decent domestic fridge might be, so even they use a fair bit of electricity.

You could buy a 240v AC fridge - tiny ones are available - but they aren't particularly well insulated, and will only thermostatically maintain the desired temperature if powered up all the time. The minimum size of inverter that will operate a fridge compressor is 800w and the inverter itself will gobble up power just by being switched 'on', even if nothing is drawing 240v, so between them they will also 'hammer' the battery.

One solution is to do as I did and:

-Buy a used 'table top' freezer from eBay as freezers are MUCH better insulated than are fridges.

-Turn the thermostat to high so that the compressor cuts in and stays on when the 'mains' is turned on. Plug the 'freezer' into the inverter which is not yet powered up.

-From eBay, buy an external 12v thermostat and insert the remote sensor into the freezer, setting this thermostat to 4 degrees c.

-Run the switched 12v power cable from the new thermostat to a 12v relay.

-When the thermostat calls for cooling (6 deg C), the relay connects your 12v battery to the inverter, switching it on and so switching on the 'mains' freezer.

-When the freezer (now fridge) attains 4 deg C, the 12v is cut to the inverter turning it off, which in turn cuts the 240v to the fridge.

COST

- £35 -  2nd hand tabletop freezer.

- £25 -   thermostat and relay from eBay (China)

- £110 - Sterling 800w inverter (new) but you may well already have one on board. (minimum of 800w though)

You now have a cheap, super insulated, highly efficient compressor fridge that runs off of your 12v batteries. 

Mine only draws 70 watts, so about 6 amps, for a few minutes each hour. I have 2x 90w solar panels that easily keep up with my demands between May and August, even if I'm not cruising. It is an easy diy job if you can crimp a few terminals onto a few wires.

Now you can keep your butter fresh and your milk won't turn into cream cheese!

 

 

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