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Keeping your coolers cold
A couple of medium-sized coolers work
better than one big one. Keep
one cooler for beverages and another for items you want to stay really
cold, such as meats and cheeses. Cubes of ice in a 'beverage only'
cooler should be clean enough to add to drinks. Caution: don't drink the melted ice water
or eat ice from a cooler that has raw
meat in it, or is otherwise bacteria-laden. Stay healthy on the playa.
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http://www.reflectixinc.com/funfacts.asp
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Frequently opened coolers warm up quickly.
Don't open the lid and stare into your cooler: this isn't your home refrigerator!
If you need to, label the outside of your coolers with their contents to minimize
searching.
Make
sure the cooler lid closes tightly. Always
keep your coolers in the shade. Cover the coolers with layers of
Reflectix (aluminized 'bubble wrap'), Styrofoam, blankets and/or old
sleeping bags to help insulate your coolers from the radiant playa heat.
Read the section on Making a cool
space for more information and links on radiant heat
transfer and products to keep out the heat.
You can
put small coolers in a large box filled with Styrofoam peanuts. You can
also line the inside of your cooler with products like Reflectix.
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You
can buy ice at Burning Man...usually. Sometimes Camp Artica runs out of
ice for periods of time. Be flexible with your needs for ice. Don't wait
till you are out of ice before getting more. How many hours does it take
to chill down a cooler full of warm microbrew? Find out: you need to
know these things on the playa!
Freeze
bottles of drinking water and cans of non-carbonated juice drinks like
Kern's and Hansen 'smoothies' to use as 'ice' in your coolers: they
don't get your cooler 'wet' as they thaw out. The juices make a
delicious ice cold beverage once they have thawed enough to drink. Chill
everything overnight before packing your coolers. Freeze everything you
can freeze, such as meats etc. If you can't freeze it, make sure it is
very cold. Coolers can also be used
for 'cool dry storage' of items like breads: freeze some bread ahead of
time, but don't add ice to the cooler. Fresh fruit can also benefit from
cool dry storage. Excerpts
from dry
ice thread from the AEZ mailing list:
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"Hopefully one of you out there can give me some advice about dry ice related stuff. I'd like to keep some frozen goods and figure
dry ice is the best way to go. Unfortunately, I have no idea where to start looking for it/what the best coolers are/how to pack it
etc. Basically I'm a dry ice newbie."
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Dry Ice is Frozen Carbon Dioxide (Co2) -80 Deg C/ -109 F.
Handle with gloves, as it will give you frostbite "burns". The more tightly wrapped it
is (Butcher paper, Kraft paper, even Newspaper), the slower it
'evaporates' (actually dry ice sublimates). Wrapped, it will keep an ice chest cold & frozen
for at least 2 days. If it falls to the bottom, and gets wet, it does not last long, and QUICKLY
dissipates. It WILL freeze any items below it, and left long enough, it will
freeze bananas & peaches above it, along with the lettuce.
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Dale Scott, former Black Rock City fire chief, had a nice dry-ice arrangement that I've also used. (Back in the days before Camparctica and refrigerators on the Center Camp power grid.) The problem with dry ice is that it is SO cold, any foodstuff near it is rock-hard and unusable. This also means that lots of cooling power is wasted any time you take an item out to thaw it for use.
So, Dale used a two-stage arrangement. He kept his dry ice supply separate, sealed, double insulated, etc. Only a few "blue ice"s shared storage with the dry ice.
As needed, he'd move a really cold blue-ice into a food cooler, and move a used-up blue ice back into a dry ice cooler. This provides easily-regulated temperatures for food and drink, and you don't accidentally freeze your beer. (Strange But True: Frozen beer isn't beer anymore after it thaws.)
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Dry ice will make things like plastic *extremely* brittle! don't break your
cooler!
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Is dry ice safe? What happens if I
breathe it air with 'fumes' from sublimating dry ice?
http://www.dryiceinfo.com/safe.htm
Fun with dry ice: you can
make a 'witches brew' by putting a piece of dry ice into a large (not
plastic) container filled with juice or other beverage. As the dry ice
sublimates, fog will pour out of the container. Be sure to use 'food
grade' dry ice for this!
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