Thread: Chilly Bin Recommendations

After fishing last weekend at the canals and taking our current crappy chilly bin along I looked at the ice all melted away after 5 hrs .
It was a cool day and it still failed. To be fair it's always been a piece of shit but even more so now that I got it home and kicked the shit out of it before putting a hammer through it.
Overly immature display of aggression I know but fuck it was satisfying. Plus I now can buy a chilly bin that works.
Icytek is an obvious choice but wondered if anyone had other brands they were / are happy with.

cheers Viper

Have Icey-Tek and Dometic. Would recommend both. Dometic has a proper square profile which I prefer.

+1 for iceytek

One place I hunt, we drive to, and stay for a week. I clear a space in one of the chest freezers a day or so beforehand, and put the chilly bin in, full of salt flake ice and whatever frozen food we might want. With mindful use around opening the bin up, there is usually about half the ice remaining at the end of the trip. This is in April, central NI, so not very cold weather.
90L Icey-tek.

Would also happily own a dometic.
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+1 dometic square shape allows for storing more, Don,t forget to remove the little plastic stacking tabs.

The better ones have one thing in common- they're way heavier than cheapies. My 55l Esky really does the biz but I only drag it out for proper jobs. Day trips don't demand the big boys.

I've got a few Icey Teks, seem to accumulate them as giveaways when buying drench etc. They're pretty hard to beat. I've also got a bit cheaper "Dusc" brand one I picked up from Repco when we were on holiday at one stage and it's pretty good also, on par with the Icey Teks for ice keep it ng ability, I do think the handles on the sides will eventually fail though
https://www.repco.co.nz/en/4x4-adven...8l/p/A6113589#

Got a 90L iceytek, can't imagine one much better really. Pre chilling it with some frozen bottles of water makes a difference. I have to be careful or my fish will be frozen by the time I get home from a day on the boat

Iceytek all the way. Get 3 or 4 empty milk bottles , next time you go down to the sea fill them with saltwater and freeze them. They will melt sooner than freshwater but they will keep freshwater ice or bought salt ice frozen longer, we are dealing in the minus scale of zero here ... Does that make sense ? LOL

Icytek all the way/ I have a 90l Icytek that I used for 17 years when crewing on the charter boat. Half full of flaked salt ice, a bucket of fresh seawater to create a slurry and fish came out 2 days later looking like they had just been caught. Unfortunately the skids wore off by dragging it on the nonskid deck.........but a quick trip to a plastic welder, a couple of fresh snapper and a box of beers and he welded a new base on it using some heavy duty plastic decking.....its good to go and it will outlast me......

techniice is another option.

+ another for icey Tek, I filled mine with snow (well it makes sense and there was a few feet of it) 3wks later there was still a block if ice in it (only needed it to keep meat cold for a few days) I did drain the water every few days, left it in the shade, didn't open often etc.

Regardless of what you get, one trick we learnt a long time ago was drain off the water. If you want ice to stay ice, then make sure the water gets out and leaves the ice dry. It takes a lot longer for the ice to melt if it is dry. If you use bottles of frozen water as slicka pads, then undo the caps and leave them upside down so the water gets out. Compare how long you have ice in that bottle with one where the cap is done up....

+1 for 90L Iceytek, has never let me down. I make up a salt mix in 3L milk or juice bottles (juice bottles tend to have thicker plastic). As noted, Pre-cooling before use is beneficial
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There's a shape thing for this as well, I had a 210L long bin on my charter boat and it was great for Kingies etc but less than ideal for chasing stuff around inside it. A lot of the main brands are for the similar literage a lot taller, wider and not as long which makes them a better seat and easier to fit in a car but a less useful bin for long fish etc. I went through the inside layer on mine, dropping kingies into it. Damn things have hard heads apparently! But a run with the plastic welder and a new inside base and good to go.

All the other comments about salt water used as the cooling ice and precooling everything are good info, as well as leaving the bin out of direct sunlight or inside a hot area like a car - heat transfer from the outside in is not great for longterm temp levels.