Snomaster FAQ

PRE-REFRIGERATE YOUR ITEMS 

For at least 12 hours before travelling, it can be very helpful to pre-refrigerate everything you want to keep in the SnoMaster fridge, in your fridge at home. You can also put the food into the SnoMaster fridge and run it on 230 Volts. For products that are still warm, it is best to do this one day before you depart on your trip.

SORT YOUR FOOD WISELY AND PLAN YOUR TRIPS TO THE FRIDGE

When going on a trip for several days, sort your food by order in which you want to eat them. If you cover each layer with newspaper, then less cold air can escape when the fridge is opened and the other food remains frozen. 

Avoid unnecessarily opening the fridge, and keeping the lid open for too long (especially during the warmest part of the day). Also, before you start cooking think about all the foods  you will need from the box, and get drinks for all your fellow travellers while you’re there.

FILL UP EMPTY SPACE

If a mostly empty box is opened, a lot of warm air comes into the box and then it must be cooled down after you close it again. This is very energy-consuming. Therefore, we recommend that you reuse empty space with frozen water bottles. The frozen bottles also help to keep the temperature in the box longer, even when the fridge is switched off.

A SnoMaster fridge can also operate on the starter battery, so a double battery system is not really necessary. Running the fridge overnight is also not a problem. Depending on the size and condition of the battery and the type of fridge, running the fridge efficiently is possible for several days. To be safe, however, you should set the battery monitor to the highest level of 11.8 volts while running your fridge. 

Again, everything depends on the circumstances. At cold outside temperatures, a diesel engine requires a lot of power for preheating and starting, but a car with a petrol engine and manual gearbox can be pushed easily, even if the battery is relatively low. 

If you stay in the same place for several days without driving the vehicle (which thus reboosts the charge in the battery), then operate your fridge on 230 Volts is not only possible but recommendable.

In sunny areas, installing a solar panel and/or additional batteries are also recommended. Especially if you stay several days in the same place without moving the vehicle which thus recharges the batteries.

An empty fridge can be cooled down an average of 6° to 8°C per hour. 

When the fridge is switched off, warming up an empty box from 0° to 20°C takes between 13 and 16 hours depending on the model. 

The SnoMaster fridges and freezers are equipped with a 66 Watt SnoMaster high-performance compressor. This, in contrast to some models by the competition, gives its highest performance regardless of whether it is operating on 12 V, 24 V or 230 V. 

The compressor needs approximately 5.5 Ampere at 12 Volts to run at full power. If the fridge is filled with warm food, then cooling down to 6°C can take up to four hours. The consumption is therefore roughly 20 Ah. During operation, the power consumption of the 40 Litre fridge with the lid closed, is a minimum of approx. 0.2 Ampere and thus less than 5 Ah per day. Typically, power consumption of 10 to 40 Ah per day is needed. 

Typical car batteries have a capacity of 70 to 100 Ah. However, this performance can not be fully achieved. You can use roughly half of the capacity of conventional lead-acid batteries, up to approx. 80% of cycle-proof batteries (AGM) and almost 100% of spiral winding batteries. 

If you have a fridge with only one compartment and you use it as a freezer to keep meals frozen for a longer amount of time, then we recommend also taking a simple insulated cooler for drinks, chocolates, salads, vegetables and everything else that doesn’t need to be frozen. With two sets of ice packs, which you regularly exchange, cool the insulated cooler. One set is in the cooler and the second is frozen in the SnoMaster freezer.