Do mini fridges work.

jo90 | 17:19 Fri 04th Aug 2006 | Home & Garden

6 Answers

I am thinking of buying one of these fridges for taking on my narrowboat. You plug them in to the cigarette lighter and they are supposed to cool things to 20 degrees below ambient temperature. My question is would in work on the boat and is it likely to drain the boat's battery by having it running all the time. Are they any good?

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Ethel

Hmmm. I've been on boats and know they can get very hot inside, especially when they are closed for an hour or two in hot weather. If it's 28 degrees inside the boat, it would be at best degrees in the fridge. This is not cool enough for the safe storage of foodstuffs.

Would it still work with the engine switched off? If so, it would certainly drain the battery, if not - it's pointless.

Better than nothing, I suppose, but not ideal.

jo90

Question Author

Thanks for that Ethel - pretty much confimed my suspicions. We have a gas fridge at the moment with very small capacity and during the recent heatwave the fridge became nothing more than an extra cupboard- if anything it was warmer in the fridge than out.! Back to the drawing board!

carrust

Have you thought about getting a cool box? These will work on 12v/240v. You can also buy a solar panel for �10 to power it. I know it wont be much use at night,but you'll have a choice of power supply.

jo90

Question Author

Now that's an idea Carrust - we used to run a cool box off the gas I think, but it gave up on us. A solar panel sound like a great idea - do you where to buy them?

carrust

Try Maplin electronics.

carrust

I havn't got a solar panel myself,however a friend is test driving one in the New Forest at the moment.I'll keep you updated. While camping this year I decided to try using ice cubes(bought from the supermarket) instead of the blue ice blocks you put in the freezer. I kept them in the plastic bag,& placed them in the bottom of the cool-box. They managed to keep frozen for 3 days,& performed much better than the ice blocks. You could also try wrapping the cool-box in a space blanket. You wouldn't think keeping things cool was so complicated !

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