HOW TO USE YOUR ICEY-TEK COOL BOX
Thank You for ordering one of our wonderful Cool Boxes
These boxes are superior in quality and built to last. Here are 6 top tips to help you get the most from your box. Don't forget to bung in your bungs! Each box comes with one or two bungs (depending on size) for ease of drainage of ice melt, please remember to put them in before you use your box.
1 - Cleaning your box. Before using for the first time clean the interior with dish washing detergent and rinse thoroughly. For tough colours, wash out with a mixture of 1 part bleach to 50 parts water. Occasional cleaning of the exterior is recommended using a non abrasive cloth. Oil based grime can normally be removed using a lanolin hand cleaner or baby oil and non abrasive cloth.
2 - Pre-cooling really works. If you are going away for more that a weekend then pre-cooling your box really helps. Just freeze some water in milk or coke bottles and place in your box the night before. Then replace these bottles with either ice, Icey-Tek Gel Packs or both to keep cool. If you are just going out for the day there is no need to pre-cool.
3 - Our boxes love ice. Fill the cool box with as much ice as possible. A third full is ideal. Keep the air space to a minimum which helps maintain the temperature. Don’t drain any melted ice as it will help insulate the remaining ice. If using home made ice, adding salt or using sea water will make the ice last even longer. If using shop bought ice remove from plastic bag so ice is loose.
4 - Using gel packs. If you prefer your products to stay dry then our Icey-Tek Gel Packs are the best solution. Just freeze 24 hours before you need them. We recommend one Icey-Tek Gel Pack to 20 litres of box capacity.
5 - Lots of foods can be frozen. Milk, juice, water, meat, bacon, cheese, butter etc. Adding your food frozen will prolong the coldness of your box. You will however need to remove them if you wish them to defrost.
6 - Cool to be hot! These boxes are just as good at keeping things hot as they are cool. Just reverse the thinking and fill the box with hot food wrapped in silver foil and use hot water bottles to help maintain the temperature.
Bonus Tips for Maximising the performance of your Icey-Tek:
1 - Wherever possible store the box in a cool place - if stored in direct sunlight or in a warm environment a significant amount of ice will be melted to cool the walls of the box.
2 - Ice temperature is also a factor, ice that is colder will last much longer under identical conditions.
3 - Chilling or even freezing the intended contents such as drinks and food is an often overlooked solution to longer ice retention. Remember, the colder your contents before loading, the less energy these contents will use to cool. If using to store or transport food do ensure that the temperature remains below 4°C.
4 - Amount of ice is important. We recommend filling the cool box with as much ice as possible to keep the air space to a minimum. Large areas of air will lead to faster ice melt. A small bag of ice in a large cool box will melt faster than if it were in a small one. However, a large box filled with ice will keep ice longer than a small box filled with ice. In summary, the more ice the better - however, if weight is a concern you can use other materials such as paper towels or crumpled newspaper to fill the air space voids.
5 - Surface area to volume of the ice also affects how ice melts. Block ice will melt much slower than small cubes. However, as ice melts, it is absorbing the heat from its surroundings; therefore smaller pieces of ice will chill the cool box faster. Also, it is easier to keep food cold using smaller pieces of ice. Using a mixture, for example, putting food on top of block ice, then covering the food and filling empty spaces with cube ice will help retain ice, chill, and keep food cold.
6 - Once the cool box is in use, we recommend that you do not empty the cold water. The water in the cooler will be almost as cold as the ice and will help insulate the remaining ice. If you are storing items that would be damaged by water consider using an Icey-Tek Gel Pack or place items inside a plastic container.
7 - You can also cool the box using Icey-Tek Gel Packs. Just freeze gel packs for 24 hours prior to use.
8 - There are many variables that affect ice retention: frequent lid opening, outside environment, placement in direct sunlight, etc. Careful attention to these simple details will significantly extend ice retention.
Cleaning your Icey-Tek:
Before using for the first time clean the interior with any standard dish washing detergent and rinse thoroughly.
For tough odours, wash out with a mixture of 1 part bleach to 50 parts water.
Occasional cleaning of the exterior is recommended using a non abrasive cloth and mild dish washing detergent. Oil based grime can normally be removed using a lanolin hand cleaner or baby oil and non abrasive cloth. Be aware when cleaning the box that the lid can hurt hands & heads if not held open
Child Safety:
To guard against suffocation, remove and store drainage bungs inside cooler when not in use.
Where do I put my gel ice packs... top, bottom or sides?
Good question, but before we get into this please remember to pre-cool your Icey-Tek before you use it. This means placing something large and frozen (plastic milk bottles full of water and then frozen are ideal) into the cooler the night before you need to use it. This will chill down the insulation and cool box materials which ensures you get the longest cool times from your box. The alternative is warm insulation that sucks the life out of your gel packs and contents far too quickly. Not good.
The answer to the Gel Pack quandary is (as with many things in life) not entirely straight forward and depends a lot on your personal preference and what you are trying to achieve. As we probably all remember from our school days, cold travels down and heat moves upwards. On that basis, with science in mind, you'd be best off with a layer of gel packs across the top of your contents so they continue to radiate cold down towards your food and drink. You'll need to move one or more of them out the way in order to access your contents.
If we take the above and build on it you can start to add gel packs below and also to the sides of your contents. This creates a surrounding layer of cold which gives a more even distribution. This approach, combined with loose ice and a pre-cooled Icey-Tek is the ultimate set-up to achieve longer periods of time.
As mentioned above, you can also use a combination of gel packs and loose ice. The gel packs produce strong, long and mess-free chilling whereas the ice will find its way in-between your contents to further enhance the amount of cold around the box. Icey-Tek cool boxes love ice!
Finally, if convenience is your number one priority and you don't need to achieve anything more than a long weekend of cold contents then it will certainly be easier to keep your gel packs at the bottom of the cool box. This saves having to move items around so much. You could always empty a bag or two of ice over your contents to keep things chilly if and when you need to.
We recommend the Icey-Tek Small Gel Packs for the 18 and 35 Litre Icey-Tek Cool Boxes and the Large Gel Packs for everything else across the Icey-Tek range. When you visit each of the product detail pages across our website you'll see suggestions as to how many of each gel pack to use for that particular cool box.
Here's one more bonus tip: freeze anything that can be frozen. Juice, milk, meats, water.... all of these and more can be frozen to prolong the life of your contents. You'll just need to remove them to defrost.