dry ice for ice chest

[Sea Wolf]

Whose job is it to protect those without common sense and a little basic knowledge from themselves?

"In September 2004, in anticipation of a power outage during the aftermath of Hurricane Ivan, a man aged 34 years in Mobile, Alabama, purchased a 100-lb block of dry ice from a local ice house. The block of dry ice was divided into four equal parts and packaged in brown paper bags, which were placed in the front seat of the man's pickup truck. The windows were closed, and the air conditioner was set to recirculate air inside the cab of the truck. Etc, etc., ..........."

Anybody got a match so as I can light it up down my gas filler tube and see how much is left in the tank?

(Sorry if this sounds harsh, but Darwin's Law may be at work here.)

Joe.

[Sarge]

I thought you'd jump on the fact that it was 100 pounds of dry ice...not likely what someone would have on his/her boat, but none-the-less I thought it was worth mentioning if only to make others aware.

-Sarge/Carl

[Sea Wolf]

[Byrdman]

Ice in the Mobile area during hurricane events is a deal in itself. It gets nasty.. particuarly when folks can often have their "years keep" of shrimp iced down for sales... Some near disater events guarding ice trucks when they arrived in town when the current has been off with no idea of when it will be back on. Some folks did/do think ahead and take the chances on "blowing" $200-$500 on dry ice when they have a large harvest iced. Thankfully, the prices of "safer" generators have come down, and most see them as a way of life....if...they then have the capacity to haul/store the gas for them to run for about a week. And, our utility companies have gotten much better at repowering after events too. It takes everybody working together.

Joe is correct in that we are often around dangers, and even informed intelligent folks can easily get preoccupied by events around them and simply have a mental slip for a second or two...which can/could be deadly. How many of us have crossed battery terminals with a wrench working in tight places on a boat. Battery blowing up beside your head is not good.

We just all gotta keep our eyes out for each other...

Good stuff here on the dry ice. It is very useful on long trips without gen sets or means to replentish the ice supply....but has to be cared for properly...or....that cold beer won't do ya any good.

[SEA3PO]

I have my ice chest outside...did away with that useless ice box that came with the boat...made it into a nice set of drawers...West Marine sells a improved model of ice chest that they say will hold ice a week...I don't believe it, but it does seem to hold ice better. ( if the outside is 40 degrees)

I wonder if the overboard vent of the installed ice chest would be enough to carry the gas away from the interior of the boat.... I think the lip seal on that worthless ice box sealed fairly well... just a thought. The manufacturers of that useless thing must have thought someone would use Dry Ice.

Joel
SEA3PO

[james]

useless ice box

that worthless ice box

that useless thing

Joel
SEA3PO[/quote]

are you trying to say you don't like the ice box?

LOL


James

[SEA3PO]

What I was saying was that the ice box that came with the boat is worthless.... after you put a 25 pound block of ice in it....there is just enough
room to put one six pack....that's it... I made that space into drawers...

The ice box that I bought from West Marine I keep outside....and if the temperature is not too hot it really will keep ice all week.... normally at Catalina ice makes it 3 or 4 days... good enough.....by that time I am out of gin anyhow.

What I did find out about dry ice is ....... don't keep eggs in it.... on a trip up the Colorado River I was thinking I was so cool using dry ice... and everything was cold...and did great.... until I tried to pick up the eggs... the shells were paper thin and cracked open when I touched them.... dry ice must disolve egg shells... what a mess... I ate em anyhow...

Joel
SEA3PO

[tsturm]

[breausaw]

Something a lot of people overlook is tempering their cooler, that is, place cold packs or containers of frozen water in the cooler a day ahead of time. Then on the day you leave on a trip fill the cooler with your food and place new cold packs into the cooler.
You’ll be surprised at how much longer your food will stay cold, regardless of whether you use dry ice, wet ice, or cold packs.
Also, freeze as many things as you can such as meats, water, juice, etc, etc. This works great, you’ll just have to manage things differently.
The only problem I have with dry ice (I use it as work all the time) is, it has a tendency to freeze things you don’t wont frozen. Also, you can never place dry ice in a sealed container, it must vent or BOOOOM!

[thataway]

I don't believe that the ice box in the CD 22 is vented overboard. Ours just went into the bilge--plus the seals on the ice box are not particularly good. Carbon doxide is heavier than air, and would stay in the bilge--even if the vent was overboard, it would probably leak into the bilge and be slowly defused.

Remember that carbon dioxide (dry ice is solid carbon dioxide) is gas which is formed as part of human respiration, and in the low amounts is not toxic. Not to be confused with carbon monoxide, which binds with hemoglobin in the red blood cells and is toxic. Yes, large amounts of carbon dioxide, will displace the oxygen and basically sufficate a human or cause metabolic imbalance in the human body if it is inhaled in high concentrations over a peroid of time.

Normally air contains 0.035% CO2--exposed to 3% will develope some symptoms in 15 to 20 minutes. Eye symptoms will appear after chonic high exposure--and if exposed to higher concentrations of 30% can develope cardiac abnormalities in seconds and often death. But it would take a lot of dry ice thawing to even raise the concentration 10 fold (or 0.3%)--and very unlikely it would reach 100 fold or the 3% level from dry ice in an ice chest.

So be safe, But we had 10 lbs in a well insulated freezer and 15 days later there was still several lbs of the dry ice left.

[Pat Anderson]

Actually on our CD22, the icebox WAS connected to clear plastic drain tube connected to a thru-hull fitting. We took the icebox out and removed the drain tube...and then wondered where all the water coming into the cabin was coming from! One day I saw it, and the light went on - I put a cap over the inside of the drain fitting (a tire valve cap fit perfectly), and hey presto, no more water in the cabin! Just a data point for those removing the icebox - yours could be like Bob's was or like mine was. If it is like mine was, don't forget to cap off the thru-hull fitting!

[Valkyrie]

I wrote this up in a previous thread a while back, but it might be worth repeating here.

For years when fishing and camping we would carefully wrap the fish, shrimp, meat or whatever in doubled freezer bags and keep them frozen by adding rock salt to ice. A layer of ice/salt, fish or meat, ice/salt and so on.

We have kept food frozen for a week or more this way and it works great, without the need of rounding up dry ice, which may be hard to come by in some areas.

Combined with a good cooler and closed cell foam to fill up any dead space in the cooler, it is a quite workable solution.

Nick
"Valkyrie"

[pgpg5860]

From everyone's vast knowledge, how much dry ice is needed to last 7 days in 70 degree weather in a 100L marine cooler? Thanks in advance

[Sea Wolf]

[Pat Anderson]

I don't know, I'll' bet Bob Austin has a formula, pi*r2 / sqrt of waterline length or something like that!