The Top 21 Methods for Preserving Ice: They'll Last Longer Than Ever

If you use the proper techniques and store the ice properly, you can prevent ice from melting for several hours, days, or even weeks at a time.

Without preparation, ice left outside in the open will melt within minutes or hours. However, you have a variety of options for keeping ice from melting, and I have a number of additional suggestions and techniques to prolong the life of your ice even further than it otherwise would.

How then can ice be prevented from melting?

If you expose ice to less heat, you can prevent it from melting. The best way to do this without a freezer is with a well-insulated cooler. There are numerous techniques that work in various ways to prevent ice from melting in your cooler too quickly.

Use some or all of these strategies to get the maximum amount of ice retention, so that your ice won't melt for several days or even weeks at a time.

Utilize a cooler

The best way to prevent ice from melting is to use a cooler box.

Coolers are made with thickly insulated walls that prevent heat transfer. This prevents heat from entering your ice, preventing the heat from melting your ice by warming it up.

Ice left outside might melt after a short while. Ice kept in a cooler can easily last for several days at a time as opposed to ice kept in a non-insulated plastic container or bucket.

Both hard-sided and soft-sided coolers are available. The best cooler for you will depend on how long you want your ice to last and what your budget is because there are many different brands that vary in price and performance. Check out the top cheap coolers by clicking here.

2. Make Use of a Quality Cooler

You should spend money on a premium cooler if you really want to prevent your ice from melting for a long time.

Cheaper coolers lack the much thicker and superior insulation of coolers like Yeti, RTIC, Orca, and Otterbox. Although the prices are much higher, they do work incredibly well.

Larger coolers around the 55-Quart capacity can hold ice for more than a week, while cheaper coolers around the 20-Quart capacity can hold ice for 2-4 days. When sufficiently stocked with ice, giant coolers can maintain ice for 14 days at a time.

I did my homework and created a comprehensive list of the coolers that keep ice the longest, ranked by performance. So if you're looking for the best coolers for holding ice, look at that article.

3. Employ vacuum-insulated containers

The most efficient insulation currently in use is a vacuum. It outperforms any material, including polyurethane and styrofoam.

There are numerous vacuum-insulated cups, mugs, bottles, and containers available that can hold small amounts of ice for one to two days at a time.

You'll probably only get a few hours' worth of ice or cold water if you add a small amount of ice to a regular bottle. Even less on a hot day However, these vacuum insulated bottles are so efficient that they can maintain ice for 24 hours or longer even on the hottest day.

While keeping ice in large quantities isn't the best option, doing so in small quantities is the best choice.

Visit Amazon to view the full selection of Yeti insulated cups and bottles.

Visit Amazon to view the full selection of Hydro Flask bottles.

4. Create Your Own Temporary Cooler

If a cooler or vacuum-sealed container is not available, you can create your own makeshift cooler.

There are several methods for doing this.

Here is a list of a few strategies, but you can visit this page for more information on how to prevent ice from melting without a cooler.

• Wrap aluminum foil around a plastic container.
• Ice should be kept in a ziplock bag that is then covered with tissues and placed in another plastic bag.
• Ice should be towel-wrapped.
• Ice milk jugs
• Cast iron pot frozen

5. Use Aluminum to Line Your Cooler or Container

The ability to block thermoelectric heat, also known as infrared heat, is something that the majority of coolers lack.

Coolers are excellent at preventing heat conduction and convection, the two primary methods by which heat is transferred, but they are less effective at preventing heat radiation.

Due to its ability to reflect the majority of heat radiation away from your cooler, aluminum is fantastic at preventing this third type of heat transfer.

Line your cooler with aluminum to extend the life of your ice even further, and attach a piece of aluminum to the lid as well.

It doesn't matter whether you line the inside or the outside; however, the inside is more useful and will last longer.

Line your cooler with the aluminum roofing insulation you can find at the hardware store for even better insulation. This is more effective because it contains tiny air bubbles and is frequently double-layered with aluminum. However, if not, simple alfoil will work.

Amazon has aluminum foil you can purchase.

6. Combine your ice with dry ice

Dry ice is carbon dioxide that has been frozen, and it is 109 degrees below zero. 3°F (-78 5°C) This is much below the freezing point of ordinary ice.

In the cooler, first put some dry ice in the bottom before adding regular ice on top. To find out how much dry ice to put in a cooler, click here.

Regular ice will become completely cold thanks to the dry ice, which will also lengthen its shelf life.

There won't be any mess because the dry ice will sublimate (change from a solid to a gas). You'll still have frozen water ice after the dry ice has completely disappeared, and it will last for days.

Simply keep topping off your cooler with dry ice to make your regular ice last forever and never melt.

7. Combine your ice with ice packs.

The Yeti Ice Brick is a type of ice pack that is made to melt more quickly than regular ice.

The ice bricks actually become colder as they melt. This is due to the fact that they draw energy from the ice in your cooler, making it colder, in order to change from a solid to a liquid.

This means that as your ice brick melts, it will actually keep the ice colder and last longer than it otherwise would.

When your ice brick has melted, remove it from the cooler.

Amazon has a Yeti Ice Brick for sale.

8. Make use of bigger ice cubes or frozen milk bottles

Ice in larger blocks melts more slowly than ice in smaller blocks of the same volume.

Larger blocks have a smaller surface area, which exposes less ice to the warmer outside air.

Additionally, the rest of the ice block shields the central ice from the atmosphere, which slows melting.

Using items like ice cream containers or other plastic containers, you can create large blocks in your home freezer. You can also fill milk containers to the top and freeze those. The plastic of the milk jugs will also help to slightly insulate the ice, extending its lifespan compared to an ice block of a comparable size without a plastic barrier.

9. Use more ice, overall.

Just a small amount of ice placed in a cooler will melt fairly quickly. However, the ice will last longer overall if you use more of it.

Similar to using large blocks, the surrounding ice acts as insulation against the air outside. Because there is so much ice, more heat must be applied overall, which requires more time.

Overall, the longer you have ice for the more ice you use.

10. When making ice, use boiling water

It is suggested that you make your ice cubes with boiling water. The theory behind this is that the boiling water somehow freezes with fewer air bubbles, resulting in ice cubes that are generally denser.

Boiling water seems to make it easier for air bubbles to escape and prevents them from becoming trapped, though I'm not entirely sure how this works.

Your ice will be crystal clear thanks to this, and it will also prolong the life of your ice cubes.

11. Get Your Cooler Ready

This is a HUGE tip that you should follow, especially if your cooler is a Yeti or another model with thick insulation.

While insulation that is cooler initially helps keep heat out, over time it actually absorbs heat and gets quite warm. This is especially true if you loaded your cooler after leaving it in a hot car or garage.

The ice will begin to melt if you add it to a warm or room-temperature cooler because it lowers the insulation's temperature. This causes your ice to melt very quickly, and it may not even last a day in a cooler, which can typically hold ice for five days. Find out why the ice in your Yeti is melting quickly.

Therefore, pre-chilling your cooler is essential if you want to maintain ice longer.

Dry ice, which is extremely cold, is the best way to pre-chill a cooler. Placing your entire cooler in a walk-in freezer is the second-best option. Put a sacrificial bag of ice or some frozen water bottles in your cooler the night before you use it to lower the temperature. This is the third best method (and the most practical).

On Amazon, you can view the most recent Yeti cooler prices.

12. Chill Your Food and Drinks Before Adding Ice

Drinks and food that are at room temperature should be placed inside a cooler; otherwise, the ice will melt more quickly.

Food and beverages at room temperature warm up your ice, melting some of it. Drink cooling requires a lot of energy, and doing so consumes and melts ice.

You can extend the life of your cooler by adding less heat by pre-freezing or pre-chilling everything.

13. Don't Leave Air Space In Your Cooler

When I was researching the best coolers for ice retention, I came across a video in which a man filled every cooler with the same amount of ice, regardless of size.

Identify what occurred

Compared to the large coolers, the small coolers worked MUCH better and maintained the ice for MUCH longer.

This is due to the fact that ice melts more quickly in a cooler with empty space.

Therefore, if you don't have a lot of ice, either use a smaller cooler so that it's mostly full or fill up as much of the remaining space in your cooler with ice or other cold items as you can.

If you're unsure of how to fill your cooler to prevent the air from melting your ice, get a piece of cardboard and place it over your ice before stuffing the remaining space with crumpled newspaper.

14. Try to avoid opening your cooler.

When you open your cooler, you let the warm air from outside in and all the cold air out.

This warms up your cooler more, causing the ice to melt more quickly.

All the ice will melt more quickly the more often you open your cooler and this occurs.

In order to prevent the ice from melting and to ensure that your cooler can keep ice for longer than a week, only open it when absolutely necessary.

15. As the ice melts, remove the water from your cooler.

This one is extremely illogical. I've always believed that keeping your water in the cooler will help the ice stay frozen for longer. But in reality, that's not the case.

Water is better at conducting and transferring heat through convection than air, and it has a heat capacity that is four to five times greater. This explains why dry ice melts so much more quickly in water.

In contrast to water, air slows the rate at which ice melts.

16. Avoid Placing Your Cooler Direct Sunlight

In addition to heating up your cooler's exterior, direct sunlight also contains heat radiation that can pass through your cooler and melt your ice.

You can delay the melting of your ice by keeping your cooler out of direct sunlight, which prevents the addition of additional heat energy.

17. Use a wet towel to wrap your cooler.

If you wrap your cooler in a wet towel, the water will evaporate as the wind passes over it, extending the life of your ice (assuming your cooler is in the shade).

The towel gets colder as this water transforms from a liquid to a gas.

Since this cool towel is cooler than the outside air, it shields your cooler from heat, extending the life of your ice.

18. Store your cooler in a chilly location

Where you can store your cooler so that it is as cold as possible

When you go camping, you might prefer to do so in the shade of your car rather than outside or inside, where it will be very hot.

Or perhaps you could keep it inside where the air conditioning is already on, making it colder outside.

Since less heat is entering the cooler and warming up the ice as a result of the cooler outside temperature, the ice doesn't melt.

19. Avoid Touching Hot Surfaces With Your Cooler

The ice will melt more quickly if you place your cooler on a hot surface that is radiating heat (like the metal pickup truck tray).

This is especially true for less expensive coolers without feet that elevate the cooler's bottom off the ground.

The entire cooler bottom is in contact with the hot surface, adding a lot of heat and melting the ice in your cooler.

So whenever possible, keep it away from hot surfaces.

20. Place your cooler 3/4 of the way into the ground.

Have you ever seen the underground homes that people live in in the sweltering desert?

Because the heat from the sun has a hard time penetrating the ground, they live underground where it is cooler the deeper you go.

Digging a hole (somewhere in the shade) and placing your cooler there will shield it from much of the heat of the surrounding area if you're staying put for a while and don't need to move it.

Any more than 3/4, and your cooler is probably going to get dirty.

Keep your ice in the freezer (number 21).

Placing ice in the freezer is the final and most straightforward way to prevent it from melting.

Your ice won't melt and will stay frozen indefinitely in a freezer that is always on because it will stay cold enough.

That prevents ice from melting.

Here are all the ideas I have for preventing ice from melting. They all adhere to the same straightforward principle: use every available method to keep heat away from the ice.

Ice will last longer and melt more slowly the more heat you can keep it away from.

Hope this was helpful. Check out the articles below for more details on how to preserve ice for longer or how long ice lasts:

How to prolong the life of ice in a cooler

What is the shelf life of dry ice in a cooler?

How to use salt to prevent ice from melting