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paulz
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# Posted: 29 Sep 2023 09:22 - Edited by: paulz
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Might dig a hole in the ground… any of you guys keep food/beer that way?
I’m not in the frozen north, lately still hitting 70F in mid day, 50 at night, but that will drop 20 in a couple months.
I’ve had this 12v RV fridge for several years. Been very reliable and not too amp consuming but it’s been on almost constant lately, sometimes leave it on for a day or two when gone instead of repacking the food.
What if I bury an old ice chest in the ground, does that do much, except give the animals something to do?
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gcrank1
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# Posted: 29 Sep 2023 09:43
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A walk-in dugout/root cellar/storm shelter would be cool.
And easier to deal with than just a hole in the ground, which would have to be pretty deep to be worth while.
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Brettny
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# Posted: 29 Sep 2023 09:49
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We use a normal 120v 4.5cuft fridge with separate top freezer powered by 6 GC2 golf cart batteries. The fridge is off and so is the inverter when we arnt there. We leave the charge controller on year round and (knock on wood) havnt came back to anything but full batteries.
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gcrank1
Member
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# Posted: 29 Sep 2023 10:33
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How long does it take to get the fridge down to temp when you power it up?
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paulz
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# Posted: 29 Sep 2023 10:51
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Ok, didn’t know a buried ice chest would have to be deep to do any good. The uphill wall on the side of the cabin would make a perfect walk in dugout, not sure how much cooler that would be. Plus I’m too old to dig that, maybe I could teach our lazy ass dog….
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Brettny
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# Posted: 29 Sep 2023 11:38
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Quoting: gcrank1 How long does it take to get the fridge down to temp when you power it up?
Mine maybe 1hr. I have used propane fridges before that took 24hrs. That's just not going to work with a weekend cabin.
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gcrank1
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# Posted: 29 Sep 2023 19:52
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Paul, I come at this with a Wisconsin perspective, we have to get down to about 6' deep or more to have around a 50*f ground temp (iirc). That can be achieved by going in sideways on a slope also. We had a big cheesemaking industry here long ago, especially the Swiss immigrants in the New Glarus area. Quite a few had hillside cheese aging bunkers, always were pleasant to walk into of a hot summer day.
My experience with the simple heat exchange 12vdc 'fridges' was that they are a constant draw/dont cycle like a compressor unit and take a good long while to get down to a temp. Of course, just like with an ice chest, they get down faster if you load in frozen stuff right away.
My 2 12vdc units tried just ate amps all night long pretty much depleting my bat bank overnight. More bats would have helped ($$$) and more solar to charge them (more $). The 120vac 4.5cf Haier fridge cycled but was still quite a load. We went to a Yeti clone ice chest which has been fine for our 'recreational visits'; full time would be different.
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groingo
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# Posted: 30 Sep 2023 18:36
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Ok, try getting food that doesn't need refrigeration, canned baked beans not only good for you but great around the camp fire!
Old man can' dig holes....thats simple, get a few of them yeller fire crackers (blasting caps) BOOM ya got a big hole without the digging!
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travellerw
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# Posted: 30 Sep 2023 18:46
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We don't dig a hole, but instead use a cooler in winter. To save power over the winter we just use a cooler on the floor inside the cabin and fill it with snow. It gets too cold here to leave it outside as all the stuff will freeze (sigh, learned that the hard way).
In the summer we use our converted freezer (converted to a fridge with an Inkbird). From turn on, to cool down is about 4 hours (even with 24 room temp beer in there).
I was doing some "overthinking" in summer. Wondering if I could further modify the freezer with a "cold air" inlet and fan. That way we could use it in winter and just pump cold air from outside into the freezer. In the end that seemed like a bunch of work that I didn't need to do. A cooler with snow works fine.. LOL!
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gcrank1
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# Posted: 30 Sep 2023 19:08
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I try to subscribe to the KISS Principle if at all possible too 
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