How to choose the right coolbox | Know Before You GO

Keeping your food and drink cool is essential when you go camping and in this video Ian from GO Outdoors to show you the different ways you can do that.

Firstly cool boxes, these are great for day trips, festivals or picnics. They use foam insulation to keep stuff cool, but they need to be used in conjunction with freeze packs

Next up are your classic cool boxes or passive cool boxes which use foam insulations to help keep things cool. Overtime they will gradually warm up, so there are things you can do to really help maintain a cool temperature for as along as possible. Firstly regularly replace the freeze packs, often campsites will do an exchange system where you give them a defrosted one and they give you a frozen one. Secondly make sure there are as full of possible, they work a lot better with stuff inside of them and ideally when you buy food buy pre-chilled food or frozen food to put in there. Lastly, when you open the cool box to put something in or take something out, do it as quick as possible because you don't want warm air and cold air escaping. If you do all that you can keep things cool really quite long time.

A step up from a passive cool box is an active or powered cool box now these use fan powered to aid the cooling process. They are not as good a fridge, but they are better than a passive for keeping things cool . They run of 12 volt or mains power. Now with 12 Volt power one you can run it of the cigarette lighter, but don't leave the plugged in if the car is switched of because it will drain the battery. If you've got mains power at your campsite, you can run them of the mains and there great for keeping your food cool for your whole holiday.

Finally, the Quest 3 way fridge, these run of 12 volt mains and also gas power, and are very efficient if they run of gas, but you actually have to keep them out of the tent if you are running of gas

If you need any more information on cool boxes and cooling pop into one of our stores or visit our website.

[caitlinmacaskill]

been looking for a new cool box as the one i have is old and knackered. great video. Thank you.!

[capnrob]

Interesting, we call them 'coolers' in the US, never knew they were called 'cool boxes' in AUS