Well, I decided a cooler and dealing with ice was silly since its the 21st century. So I looked into car refrigerators.. Wow! Didnt know they were so expensive! And they're not really big enough to hold a weeks worth of food, and apparently don't work too well on top of everything else.
I quickly realized I already had a cooler sized fridge sitting in the garage, and since I have an inverter already hardwired into the car, decided to test it.
Yup! It'll power it fine. (400 watt inverter, fridge was surging at 250 watts, chugging along at 100. Using Kill-A-Watt)
Sure, it'll only run when the car is on, but it should be able to retain enough food and keep the temperature steady enough.
But the problem was, I couldnt find a place to mount it, it was too big. I decided to lay it on its side, turning it into a chest fridge. But I had to rotate the compressor 90 degrees for this to work, since I know they have to sit right side up or they starve for oil. (Ask me how I know that.)
Tada! Fits in the car. I started to take pictures, but I checked online to see if it had been done before, and of course it had.
How to Convert a mini fridge to a chest refrigerator
I dont see the point in taking pictures of it now, as my set up is nearly identical, I used 2X4's instead of PVC to solve the problem of it needing to have risers though.
But! The important part is I had already measured it before when I first got the kill-a-watt (and naturally measured everything in the house with it.)
It was 1.44kwh a day average over a week With temperature set to "5".
With it as it is now, its 0.38kwh a day average over a week, with temperature set to "2"
I don't know how much the temperature sitting changed, but I'm sure it was also a help. I dont notice the temperature differences.
