re: To hold the water or to drain.

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water among the ice cannot be colder than 32 degrees

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Saltwater freezes below 32*

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I reckon the cold water is still colder than the air would be, but I've never tested that.

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In general, changes in water temperature take much longer than changes in air temperature. So the water would be and remain colder than the air. Question is whether it is significant enough to make a fricking difference. If the ice chest is staying put, leave the water. If you have to move the thing, drain the bitch.

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The way thermodynamics works when you start with all ice and it begins to melt the water/ice mixture is in equilibrium and the same temperature during the phase change only when all the ice is gone does the temperature of the water begin to rise.

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This is true, and doesn't really address the question.

At the core this is a heat transfer and heat storage question. Heat loss is increased by the difference in temperature between two objects. So by draining the water the level of cold in your ice chest drops and the rate of heat loss decreases (less cold surface area). (A little bit - the air above the water is still pretty cold).

But the cold water has a MUCH higher capacity to retain the cold than the air above it in the chest. Easy answer - you keep the cold water in the chest.

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Melted water has blown its wad from a thermodynamic standpoint, it is then only acting as a very efficient heat transfer fluid

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Not exactly true, water has blown most of its wad when compared to ice, but it still has a much higher ability to store cold temperatures than air does. It takes roughly 3,100 times as much heat to increase a volume of water 1 degree compared to a volume of air. Per weight it's about 4 times as much, but water weighs so much more that that is basically irrelevant.

Don't throw away cold water, it will still keep the chest cold longer than a chest full of air. And yes, water is a better heat transfer medium. But with the heat capacity of water vs. air that becomes a moot point.

Was thinking the same thing.

I miss having a duck place, damn these hot cropping, short stopping, DU net bastards for taking my ducks!


Seriously though can we please get another mini ice age so LA weather will be like NC and the geeenheads will come back.

You really should drain it. Even cold water conducts cold away from ice much more efficiently than cold air.

I travel to our hunting lease for a week at a time. Tried a bunch of things over the years but by far the best thing is to use large blocks of ice and big cubes.

Frozen 1 gallon jugs of ice worked pretty well until I discovered silicone ice block molds. Volume of water is about 1.8 gallons or so each. I freeze 2 blocks for each cooler. I put them in and then fill with cubed ice... never crushed ice. I can be gone for a week and come back and still have a reasonable amount of ice left. Blocks are 3/4 melted after 6 days in hot to warm temps.

Does not matter if Yeti, Coleman, Igloo. Results are about the same. I have found bigger ice is the key.

One of the guys on the ranch swears by dry ice in his spare cooler. He fills his coolers and then puts 3-4 pounds of dry ice on top and shuts the cooler and does not open it until his primary cooler needs more ice in a few days. He seems to do okay on ice. You just can't put food in a cooler with ice and dry ice unless you don't care that whatever food you put in that cooler is frozen like a rock for 2 days until dry ice is gone.

That was coo...neat.

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remember if you remove the cold water, it’s then replaced with hot air. So while your actual frozen ice will last longer with water drained, the ability to keep say beer cans cold is diminished.

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Something about this just seems wrong though.

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You are leaving out an important detail though, and that’s if everything is already cold inside the cooler and that you have 3rd party items keeping cold that your want to maintain the water.

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Everything depends on the question asked and what OP specifically asked was how to preserve ice longer, but yes liquid water will “refrigerate” better than air by keeping the temp more consistent in the container, for the exact same reason that it causes the ice to melt. It’s transferring heat more quickly to the ice, by making the heat transfer more efficient. If a marble were sitting in those cups above, the ones sitting in water would probably be cool (but greater than 32F) longer than a marble sitting next to some ice but mostly in contact with warm air, no debate there. Of course at that point you could cover the marble with the remaining ice, like you could your groceries while camping, and they would then stay colder longer. All kinds of practical things you can do to make this argument not even worth having, because ultimately insulation of the cooler is the single biggest factor for heat getting in and melting anything, water just helps it flow once it’s through the wall.

I dunk fish/deer meat in an ice slurry to cool quickly. I then drain the water once everything is cold to preserve the ice around it as long as possible. That’s the entire thing in a nutshell.