ice chest

S

starcrafttom

Active member
I am looking to buy a higher end ice chest. the yeti's are very nice and very expensive. the colemans are just not up to the task. I have found these Moeller Marine coolers. does anyone know anything about them. they look and sound like the Yetis but not as expensive. If anyone has any other suggestions that would be great.
 
Tom,

I'm not familiar with the Moellers, but I just ran a search and found a number of options on alltackle.com In fact, a comparably sized Yeti (120) is $50 dollars cheaper than a 125 Moeller. They also have a Yeti Roughneck that is even cheaper than the other two

A few years ago Saltwater Sportsman had a very comprehensive piece on high-end coolers. I wish that I still had that copy.

Regards,

Nick
"Valkyrie"
 
I bought a smaller Yeti on sale and have been happy with it. They cost more, but there is some justification for it. You will see the difference when you look closely at them and pick one up. There is a lot of material in one of them. They do function slightly better than a coleman extreme and they are a lot tougher. I don't regret spending almost twice the money for one. I know it will last my lifetime.
 
Tom,
Check out the cooler store for some ideas.

www.cooler-store.com

MAXCOLD 120 Ice Chest Cooler 120 Quarts
DownUnder T133L Tropical Cooler 133 Qt DownUnder T111L Tropical Cooler 111 Qt
Manufacturer: DownUnder
SKU: T111L
Mfg Number:
Capacity: 111 Qt
Color: White
Dimensions: 39.0" L x 19.3" W x 19.7" H

Quantity Discounted Price Valid For
2-3 $312.15 (per item) all customers
4-5 $307.37 (per item) all customers
6+ $302.59 (per item) all customers


List Price: $379.03 Status: In-Stock
Total Savings: $60.51 Qty
Your Price: $318.52

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Tropical Coolers - 111 Quart Tropical Cooler - Down Under USA T111L
Get this Tropical Cooler from Down Under USA to store the ice for long time. With a huge capacity of 111 Quart, model T111L comprises of 2 inches thick walls, 3 inches thick lid and a replaceable watertight seal. This rugged model also has a marine grade fiberglass, special blended refrigeration insulation and a non slip feet. Easy to clean, it has a Rota molded heavy duty construction which comes with 5 years' limited warranty.
D.D.
 
My info is completely unscientific and based on 'research' I did before buying an expensive cooler. I decided that coolers are a place where the law of diminishing returns operates very well, even though the published tests do not seem to resemble real world use all that well (e.g. put a maximal block of ice in the cooler and see how much is left after 5 (or n) days). You pay double or triple the price of the Coleman to get 12 extra hours worth of ice.

My suggestion would be to buy the best Coleman (Extreme?) and improve it. The basic improvement is to make wall and floor liners by cutting polystyrene planks to fit. I also used R19(?) house insulation material which I used to fill airtight polythene bags like big ziplocs. Anything you can do to reduce heat exchange at the walls will help. If I had more interest I would have done something with the lid too, but you could always just cover your contents with more R19 bags.

Somewhere on the site Dr. Bob discussed how he made highly effective coolers from scratch.

Roy
 
I have an SSI 200 Qtcooler and I will testify it is better than any other cooler Ive had . Left full of rough crushed fish house ice in July in Florida ,after 7 days there was still a decent mound of ice on the bottom . Just be judicious about opening and closing it ,and the densely insulated coolers are substantially better from my experience .
Marc
 
well it looks like the yeti, ssi, and moeller are all built on the same concept and similar design. I will not buy another Coleman xtreme or cheaper ice boxes. They are find for the day but i need to keep fish and stuff cold for 5 days while gone in Canada with out getting ice every day if not twice a day as I did last year with my Coleman. I also prefer to buy something built right and not have to fix a poor design.

So it gets down to getting the right size for the lest money online. I want a chest in the 125 to 160 qt size. most of these are in the 40 to 42 inch size with serves two purposes. first that's the length of the longest salmon i am likely to catch and it will provide a two man seat in the cockpit.
 
I know there was a long, informative thread about ice chests a couple of years back, but I can't find it. Maybe someone else will have better luck.

Warren
 
I have a smaller Moeller Ice Station Zero. I think these higher end coolers are somewhat better at holding ice. It's kind of hard to tell for sure in my family, as the kids open the thing up so often. I bought it mostly for build quality purposes after getting tired of replacing the coleman type chest every year. The stainless hinges, heavy duty rubber closing device, and heavy gasketing are really tough and can take some abuse. As mentioned above, there are several competing brands (such as Yeti) that all seem to make pretty similar quality chests.
 
When fishing up at Nootka Sound 3 years ago, everyone had one of those foil bubble wrap covers on their cooler, except us. We had salt ice with us from Campbell River and some block. It stayed pretty well.

The next year, went to Home Depot, bought the foil and bubble wrap insulation and foil duct tape and made our covers. What a big difference! We used 1/2 the amount of ice!

Want even more efficiency? Put the foil insulation INSIDE the cooler as well as have your cover on the outside, now that really works good, too! The stuff is fairly inexpensive and pretty durable.

I also put the rock salt and cube ice suggestion to the test and that works great for cooling and freezing. Just make sure you do your freezing in a smaller cooler then transfer to your regular. Handy for "Processing" your salmon, freezing it on boat, then you can "keep" more.
 
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