Who freezes their own ice? I just set a gallon milk jug of water in the deep freeze. Going to see how it does in the igloo tomorrow.

I know it will last longer, but how well does it keep your stuff cold since it's not making direct contact?

Add some salt to your water nxt time

I keep about 6 jug of ice froze all the time.

That make it cool faster once it's in the cooler?

Don't add salt. It will freeze your drinks and your ice will melt a lot faster. I precool my coolers with frozen gallon jugs, but take them out when adding ice. They take up way too much room for Cold Beer. I do put frozen water bottles in with the ice and beer, and it keeps cold a lot longer than just ice.

Just read the post again. I thought he meant adding salt to the ice. I've never tried adding salt to a water jug.

The quality of your cooler is most important. Putting block ice in and lack of contact is not a big deal. Think about your fridge. It has no direct contact either. I prefer several half gallon jugs spread at each end, in the cooler rather than one or two gallon jugs. Good luck.

I throw a few water+salt filled Gatorade bottles in mine with my ice and I've never had a drink freeze (maybe frosty) yet. Sure if he ads ice, water and some rock salt it will create a slush and freeze drinks

I'm gonna have to try that! How much salt do you add?

Crap I've been using same bottles for probably 6 months or longer. Someone had a post about how much salt to ad and I don't remember how much right off hand. Now the ice will definitely stick to the bottles, I had a few beers get stuck between the bottles and ice before

Don't fill up the bottles, the water will expand. Leave little room at the top

Don't use milk jugs, use gatoraid or the like bottles
milk jugs will split

make sure you get the milk jug clean. If not your cooler will smell like open azz and buttermilk. My wife drinks filtered water by the gallon. I freeze it .I fill the jug about 2/3 full. It fits my cooler a little better if i keep it solid.

I washed the milk jug out good. Left room for expansion. Also froze a 1 liter mtn dew bottle. I'm putting all our drinks in the fridge tonight. See how that goes.

Been using this cooler for 3 years now. It's the 28qt igloo marine. Just the right size to fit in our wagon and it does a decent job for a $28 cooler.

Local gun and ammo dealer has Pelican coolers and great prices, but they ( like all the super coolers) are so dang big. The 30qt is prob 25% bigger than my 28 igloo. No doubt it's a much better cooler, but there's only so much room in the trunk of the car.

I use gallon milk jugs with salt added in addition to loose ice. Works great.

thanks for the info, never thought about freezing smaller bottles.

Google Polar Bear Tubes.

Well, I did it today. I only had one gallon jug and the drinks were in the fridge over night. Worked pretty well. It was about 75 degrees today and everything stayed cold from 6am till 430 when we left.

Next time I'm going to do smaller bottles and freeze several of the waters. I maybe done buying $3 bags of ice.

Frozen 2 liter bottle work great.