fridge's and desert heat.

[rainbird]

So my .Edgestar works great. With ambient temps in the high 70's It can keep at 38 degrees for a couple days without driving to re-charge the battery.It's isolated on it's own deep cycle battery. Now, what performance difference will I get with temps in the high 90's?. I wont be adding a solar panel and only recharging from the alternator while driving every couple of days. Kind of an obvious answer I guess but I'm hoping to get real world experience from you guys who use them in really hot places. I've added a thermal blanket cover and that does help a bit.

 

[UglyScout]

If you read through the zillion page post about the Edgestars on expoportal - you will find a bunch of guys that have run them in the desert and baja with success - But I do not recall anyone giving battery run times vs. temp stats.

I haven't had mine long enough to do any real testing yet. But it sure was nice this weekend to turn it on the day before the trip - load it up at my convience - have dry cold food all weekend and unload the still perfectly good food into my home fridge at the end... NICE! Zero wasted food and zero ice.

 

[K7MDL]

I rarely turn on my 3-way fridge for weekends. Instead I slip in several "Blue Ice" units. About 4-6 of these in various sizes keeps my stuff cold for 2-3 days. It also helps to precool the stuff going in. It gets cold enough that I occasionally have the blue ice plastic case frozen to a shelf.

 

[UglyScout]

I rarely turn my 3-way for weekends. Instead I slip in several "Blue Ice" units. About 4-6 of these in various sizes keeps my stuff cold for 2-3 days. It also helps to precool the stuff going in. It gets cold enough that I occasionally have the blue ice plastic case frozen to a shelf.


I used frozen jugs of ice in my broken 2-way fridge before I swapped to the edgestar. It worked pretty well when it was cool, but when it was 70-80 out the stuff didn't stay too cold after a while.

 

[Jeff Wanamog]

If you plan on getting into some really extreme heat, make yourself a cover of Reflectix insulation. Pick it up at Lowes or Home Depot. Make sure that there is still openings for the vents. Wrap it tight and make a cover for the top too. It makes a huge difference for my ARB. The cover that is made and sold for the ARB has a material inside that is almost like the Reflectix insulation. I think the Reflectix would be better.
It would look cool too if you did a clean job.
Hope this helps.
Jeff