DIY - Coolers

[mcgster]

Has anyone out there played around with making their own beer coolers?

I want to make a nice cedar one this summer so i thought i would pick up a sheet of rigid foam and run a few tests.

I built a cooler to hold 8x8 12 oz bottles this weekend out of a 20$ sheet (2'x8') of 1.5 " rigid.

I just loaded 16 beer bottles filled with water in there and 4 dollarama ice packs, i'm going to check it in over a few intervals and see how it holds the temperature.

I am curious to see how well the 1.5" foam holds up before building a nice finished one. The thickness of the foam starts to have diminishing returns (mathematically at least!) after 1.5. I.e. 0.5" foam has U value of .4, 1" has 0.2, 1.5" has 0.1333 and 2" has .10 even though the R values are linear at R5/inch.

Since the thickness of the foam will impact the asthetics and cost of the one i build this summer i figured i'd do some tests... and i wanted to build something..

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[mcgster]

Note - i had this perfectly planned out to be cut from 1 2x8 sheet of foam but the guy at HD who cut it for me to fit in my car butchered the cut so i had to scab it together.

cooler2.jpg