Camping With Dry Ice

This is a follow up to my "where to find dry ice for camping" video. The dry ice held up till 3 1/2 days after we picked up 20lbs of dry ice from a local Safeway supermarket. Also remember that the cooler was stored in the shade from our tent in an average daily hi temperature of 90-100'F and average daily low of 65-70'F. The cooler we used was an igloo 50qt 5-day cooler. We may be trying this experiment again in early September when we go camping again and the average temperatures will be 15'F lower. Hopefully the temperature drop has an effect on the longevity of the dry ice in the cooler.

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[davesevigny]

I have used dry ice many times over the years, traveling to a remote cabin near the canadian boarder. I typicly always stayed ten days. But always had issues with keeping my food frozen and cold the entire stay. At that time they did not have any of the tight sealing coolers that are on the market today. What I did was put dry ice in my coleman cooler similar to the way you do it. Since heat is not a enemy to dry ice, and air or oxygen is, I placed the cooler in two large heavy duty trash bags. Then squeezed out most of the air and sealed them up. The items in both of my coolers were still froze soild at the end of ten days. This seemed to work very well, I used this method for many trouble free years. I now own a tight sealing cooler, and want to try dry ice in it. Good video, and good ideas bro, I just wanted to share my experiance with you. Dave

[VODZ]

Just got back from a camping trip using this method with dry ice, it worked out great.  It was a big group camping trip with my girlfiends family members and i packed my cooler with dry ice at the bottom and regular ice on top and then food and drink items on top of that.  It was only a 3 day trip but the closest place to get ice was well over an hour away.  All of the other coolers brought had regular ice and were melted or mostly water by the 2nd day (they didn't pre-cool their food). Mine were fine, infact some water bottles actually froze about half way. we could have gone another 2 days easily without ice.  The only issue i had was keeping items on the top cold, but rotating them to the bottom seemed to help.  Once again, thanks for the tip and the video. 

[howiedewit]

I scanned some of the comments quickly so apologies if this has been said. I think you lost a lot of your potential ice preservation by popping all that ice into your 100 degree cooler. Think of the thermal exchange that happened to bring it down to 66 degrees in the 20 minutes it took you to get home. What I do is toss in some “sacrificial ice” the night before to bring down the internal temp of the cooler and the temp of the insulation as low as possible. Then, the day of packing, I toss that out and restart with the fresh stuff. Of course you could do the same with ice packs or frozen water bottles - but you gotta start as cold as possible.

[javaman]

Our family of 4 uses two coolers on our trips. We have a larger one using regular ice, for drinks and refrigerated type items. We have a smaller one with dry ice in it, for the frozen stuff. We've found that sausages, tater tots, etc will last longer and taste better if they remain frozen.
Another big help for us, is keeping water o flavored beverage in a separate beverage cooler. Just stick a bag of ice in the cooler, top off with water, add flavor powder if desired (coolaid, tang, country time lemonade, etc); then dispense as wanted. By keeping it in a container without a lid opening multiple times per day, the ice lasts longer.

[PhanOT]

Next weekend, I’m planning to do this (dry ice) for the very first time. Great help thanks.

[abdullaex]

Keep your cooler in the shade at all time. Make shade if you don't have any. Makes a big difference when camping for an extended period of time.

[DannyB-csvx]

Wrap the cooler in a space blanket, (shinny side out). This will keep radiant heat from going into the cooler. You also can put a cooler inside of a larger cooler. the lower the air temp is around the cooler that has the ice, the longer it will last. The space between the two coolers can also be used to store food that doesn't need refrigeration.

[heli]

I mostly weekend warrior camp with my kids, I used to do dry ice, but it was too cold and froze everything. I didn't enjoy having to thaw things while camping and you cant shove a stick into a frozen wiener.

One solution I did was a dry ice cooler aka 'the freezer' and a regular cooler kept cold with frozen water bottles aka 'the fridge'. And then I swapped out bottles of water from the freezer to the fridge as they froze with the dry ice and thawed in the fridge (as the bottles cooled the other items) it worked.

but now I just use frozen 2L milk containers filled with water as I have found there is still a sliver of ice in them by the time the trip is done.

Saves the cost of buying dry ice ;)

[idbrnu]

I have a Kysek a Yeti, big bucks but it's mine for life. One week, is never a problem with even regular ice if properly planned for. Their big, heavy and interior space is more limited due to the thickness of the insulated walls. But like I said, it's a keeper for life and I'll never ever go back to regular cooler again. Thanks for posting!!

[normpaddle]

Thanks for the tips and info. Yeah planning a 6 day canoe trip in 90 degree heat.  What I've done also is in the morning, I would take out the evenings frozen meal and put in a soft sided cooler...by the end of the day it would be soft or thawed. Just keep transfering what you need into something to thaw out. Great video.

[richshawver]

On the lower end coolers they are mostly a 2 walled hollow space. If you fill this inner space and the hollow lid with spray in foam insulation it will greatly increase your performance.
2nd insulation enhancement. Make a box that fills your cooler with the home insulation that is bubble wrap with foil exterior and a slide over top. This 1/8 inch thick product gives a R-7 insulation value. This should also help prevent cracking of the plastic from the dry ice cold.
Both products can be found at most home improvement stores. I.E. Lowes & Home Depot.

Cold improvement. Take flat containers or bottles. Fill them With a saturated water and salt solution. Pre-freeze This mix has a frozen temperature of 0 degrees. This is why the Fahrenheit scale starts at 0 with freezing water is at 32. 0 was the coldest temperature where a saturated salt water solution would consistently freeze.

With both water ice and dry ice it is better to use blocks than cubes or pellets. In the larger forms the outer layers insulate the middle. The smaller sized chunks have more surface area. Hence are more exposed and melt more quickly.

Hope this helps.

[billturk]

Good video. I camp with dry ice too and use a yeti 60. I got 5 days of frozen meat from 75 lbs of dry ice. I also used lake water to make ice for my beer because I didn’t have wet ice after it melted. Camping is camping, you always learn something new or figure something out. Well done.

[kyouell]

With both dry ice and regular ice it works better to have it on top: cold sinks, heat rises. We had an old cooler that had a try for items you wanted to keep dry and that's where we wild put the ice. Also, with regular ice, block will stay frozen longer than cubes.

[gig]

My suggestion to make the ice last longer is to build a box for your cooler and then line it with 4" of polystyrene. You could even make a lid for it as well. So essentially you would have a cooler in a cooler. The polystyrene comes in 8ft x 4ft sections at any building supply store like Home Depot or Lowes. You can get it in 1-1/2" thickness or 2" thickness.

[unclejack]

once he added ice it voided the whole deal. Ice of which is H20 touching the Dry ice will cause it to breakdown faster.Frozen bottles of H20 not touching the Dry ice will last 5 days in this mohave desert thank you.Done it !!

[danielevans]

From my experience, dry ice sublimates about 2 to 3 lbs every 24 hrs. Sometime more based on the altitude. Last week i bought 10 lbs of dry ice and my food in the whole cooler staid frozen for 5 days. I still put all my frozen meats in there but no fridge food because i but the ice on top of my meats still in bag then put a layer of paper bags on top. Then lastly the dry ice on top. Since cool air goes down your meats and ice stay frozen longer.

[eve-]

You are such a smart camper. I'm using this method for my next camping trip. Thank you for posting this video!

[Hg-suvc]

I have a huge cooler so I used six and it was good for my week and a half trip and well after

[cuzv]

It would be interesting to see how much longer the dry ice would work with an RTIC or Yeti hard side cooler. 3 days with an inexpensive Igloo is pretty impressive in that heat.

[madelectronengineering]

I had the drain plug closed. Just make sure you don't have anything stacked on the lid of the cooler so it can slowly burp the pressure out from the dry ice / carbon dioxide buildup.