Advantages of small portable car refrigerator

• Posted by carfridge yunge July 20, 2021 - Filed in Business - #Advantages of small portable car refrigerator  - 156 views

  If you’re DIY-oriented – and let’s face it, if you’re reading this blog, you probably are – then you can build your own fairly efficient fridge out of a chest freezer. Freezers tend to have thicker insulation than fridges, which means that your DIY fridge will be more efficient than a standard mini-fridge.

  The general idea is to take a chest freezer, plug it into a small inverter, and wire it to a thermostat that you set to fridge temperatures. The thermostat is connected to a relay that kicks the inverter on and off as needed. When the temperature inside the fridge rises above our target, the relay turns the inverter on. Once the fridge reaches the low temperature you set, the relay turns off the inverter. This prevents it from cooling too much, and also prevents power drain from leaving the inverter on all the time.

  The big benefit here is cost – you can make a real, working refrigerator for a fraction of the cost of a purpose-built 12V portable unit. But as with anything, there are drawbacks. These fridges may not be quite as efficient as 12V fridges, and you’ll have to sink some time into building this setup.

  Chest freezers tend to be quite large, and many of the smaller ones are – we couldn’t find many smaller than 3.5 cubic feet, which is twice the size of a 50 L   small portable car refrigerator  – so if you need something smaller for your van, you’ll have to go with an upright freezer instead. But the same general idea applies for converting it to a DIY vanlife fridge.