Does freezing a pack of bottled water...

[disneyluvr913]

stay frozen for a week in a cooler?

I read somewhere that a family just froze a twelve-pack of water before leaving and they used it to keep sandwich meat and fruit cold in their cooler. The water bottles lasted for a week. They never had to buy ice once!

Has anyone tried this?

 

[ducklite]

I'm not buying a full week. It depends on the type of cooler. I've got some fancy schmancy Coleman that we never used (I'm the queen hurricane preparedness, I've also got a new in the box chainsaw, an no tree higher than maybe ten feet on my property...)

Anyhow, this thing is Coleman's creme de la creme, and it still only claims to stay cold for four days or so.

Anne

 

[CleveRocks]

REALITY CHECK:

If you froze a 12-pack of water and put it inside a properly working refrigerator (let alone a cooler) the bottles would not stay frozen for a whole week. Think about it -- you have a 25 pound turkey that's frozen solid and you defrost it in the fridge starting 2 days before Thanksgiving, and on Thanksgiving morning it's nice and thawed and ready to stuff and cook.

So if a fridge won't do it, I can't see how a cooler would do it.

 

[laurabelle]

I agree! I had frozen bottled water in a cooler last week that was still frozen when I returned home and put it in the fridge. I'd say maybe 2 days later, it was thawed.

 

[seashoreCM]

Little known fact -- Containers of plain water frozen to minus one degree (F) will not stay frozen much longer than the same containers with the same water frozen and at 31 degrees.

I would not be totally surprised if a group of bottles of water frozen were still partly frozen after a week but chances are the otherwise unrefrigerated container they were in did not have room for much meat or other items.

There was a time when ice would be "harvested" off of frozen lakes and stored in a shed for use during the warmer seasons and some would remain frozen for several months. Trivia question: What play (made into a movie not by Disney and set in an era before mechanical refrigeration) has the following line: "summer and we're running out of ice"?

Unrelated useful hints:
http://members.aol.com/ajaynejr/home.htm

 

[nicdanh]

 

[bsbkmacgowan]

Trivia question: What play (made into a movie not by Disney and set in an era before mechanical refrigeration) has the following line: "summer and we're running out of ice"?

Ah, that would be "Oklahoma!" I believe! (Poor Jud... )
Okay, sometimes I think I know way too much trivia...

Sandy (and Brian, Bonnie & Kellie, too!)

 

[hdecker]

It does depend on the cooler and the conditions. We camp alot and we freeze the gallon milk containers full of water - we put four each into 2 coolers. One cooler has the food for the first three days, the 2nd for the last three days. We don't open the 2nd cooler at all until day 4. We also freeze any food that is going into the coolers. This works really well and we are still drinking ice cold water on the last day and nothing has ever spoiled.

 

[LauraAnn630]

I do know this...

I froze 4 bottles of water. I put them in a softsided cooler with a few cans of soda. We went to Geauge Lake in 80 degree weather. I hung the softsided cooler on the stroller. It was not kept in the shade most of the day. About 9:00pm I took out 2 bottles of water expecting to get a cool drink. They were frozen solid!! I was shocked.

 

[molly2004]

I don't think it's the temperature that kept it frozen for that long. I think it was the sheer number of bottles placed in close proximity to one another. Heat moves into cold. The bottles in the middle have no heat to transfer so they stay cold. The bottles on the perimeter will melt first and slowly transfer their heat to the interior bottles. At that rate, it could be possible that the bottles stayed frozen. But then that would mean that you'd have to keep the cooler shut the entire time.

About the turkey argument, not sure if that flies. Turkey meat has a different freezing point than does water, probably higher. So it will melt in less time than water packed the same way.

 

[DonnaL]

I have a Thermos soft sided insulated bag which I take with me as my carryon to WDW all the time. I don't put any frozen bottles of water in the bag, but, I do put frozen plastic containers of precooked ground meat ( already seasoned for sloppy joes, or taco seasoned) precooked chicken, and
meatballs/sauce in it. Between car travel to airport, flight times, and car travel to WDW from MCO and then time to checkin I would say it's anywhere from 7 to 9 hours. Everything in the bag is usually still frozen pretty good when we get there. I then just put the containers in the fridge at our DVC villa to finish thawing on their own and we have good meals almost ready to go. So, even the newer soft sided bags work pretty good. Granted, I've got mine packed with all frozen containers so they keep each other frozen. But, I don't think a 12 pack of water would stay frozen all week.......maybe two days tops.

 

[Dopey Sharon]

REALITY CHECK:

Think about it -- you have a 25 pound turkey that's frozen solid and you defrost it in the fridge starting 2 days before Thanksgiving, and on Thanksgiving morning it's nice and thawed and ready to stuff and cook.

Not necessarily! I put my 22 pound turkey in my little backup fridge I have in my garage four days before Thanksgiving. Imagine my surprise when I went to check on it the day before Thanksgiving and it was still frozen solid!

I think the size of the cooler/refrigerator has to figure in on this situation, because that turkey would not have still been frozen solid in my regular refrigerator.

I'm not sure the water would stay frozen for a week, but I'm sure it would for at least three days or more depending on how many times the cooler was opened and how hot it was outside the cooler.

 

[richard_andmel]

For some reason this thread has just cracked me up. I must be sleep deprived. Too little sleep while thinking about my upcomming trip.