navigator wrote:Dave, did you say you found that dumpster diving?
dvanbramer88 wrote:I'll agree its not the best thing ever, but it should work for me just fine. .......
The Roadie wrote:Research, plan your mods, fund the plan, then GO DO THEM. THEN WHEEL IT.
The Roadie wrote:It's worth a couple of bucks more than you paid for it.
For more reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling
Summary, they can be had for $20-40 more than the cost of the cooler they're built into. In trade for being position insensitive and silent, they are horribly inefficient and will suck your battery overnight while only giving you 40-50 degree max temp drop with a very small heat transfer capacity. Meaning you can't use a cooler full of warm beer for 2-3 days after you put them in. Nothing to take on an expedition, but they can be a cheap alternative to a garage fridge if you give the beer a week to cool down.
dvanbramer88 wrote:I'll agree its not the best thing ever, but it should work for me just fine. Like I said, it went from 74 and humid ambient temp to 34 degrees in less than an hour sitting on my driveway in the sun. It was also empty. Like I said, if you fill it with cold stuff and an icepack or two, it should have no problem maintaining cold temps for a few days.
A quick Googling suggests they demand 2.5-5A and they would run at 100% duty cycle unless the contents were put in there colder than the setpoint and the ambient isn't too high. That's going to drain a deep-cycle battery in 10-15 hours. My Engel draws 3A, but at 80 degree ambient, the duty cycle is around 10%. And when you dump warm things in it like 30 bottles of beer, the time it takes at 100% duty cycle to cool them off is only about 4 hours. The BTU/hour cooling rate is part of the difference, along with the current draw. The ratio of those two numbers is a measure of efficiency along with the insulation specs of the enclosure.JamesDowning wrote:..why not measure the current draw from this thing and calculate how many amp-hours would be required to run it for a few days....