Hi Frank,
I don't know if you would like to have a large cooler personally or not, but the product I am going to share with you will help you to do that cost effectively.
The Coolbot is a product which allows a standard window air conditioner to be tricked into operating as a refrigerator compressor. You can find info on it at www.storeitcold.com . For a fraction of the cost of installation, maintenance and operation of a standard cold room refrigeration unit you can do the identical job. The coolbot costs $349 and an AC unit to use with it is between $250 and $600 depending on the size of the cold room.
What I have done at my house is to create a 3 stage cold room/root cellar. The first room is roughly 5 feet by 5 feet and is our walk-in refrigerator. It is connected to a room with dimensions of about 5.5 feet by 5 feet and finally to a 3rd room which is about the same size as the second room. All three rooms have open rack shelves in them for food storage. The AC unit is in the first room as it is the coldest room and we keep the temperature at about 37 degrees F. The rooms are well insulated (~R30+ on the walls and ceiling and R10 on the floor. They are interconnected with the plastic curtains used for freezer units to separate the spaces and keep most of the cold in the colder rooms. The 1st and 2nd room are connected with a double wall curtain and the 2nd and 3rd room with a single wall curtain.
The temp in the second room is typically between 40 and 45 degrees F and the 3rd room is usually between 50 and 55 degrees F. The third room has both and inlet and outlet ventilation and the other two rooms just have outlet ventilation. I have pans of
water in the warmest room for humidity. The cold migrates from the coldest room to the warmest and the humidity migrates from the warmest to the coldest. Of
course when the humid warmer air gets colder the amount of water in that air has a proportionally larger effect on the air in the colder spaces. The fine tuning process is still in progress on the total setup. There is a fourth room which is also insulated that acts as a foyer between the outside air and the cold spaces. It stays cool (air-conditioned temps) and both the door to the outside and the door to the root cellar are insulated.
This room was built into a north facing room that the previous owner had built under part of the deck. I first insulated the room with fiberglass batt insultaion to R13-16 and then used a vapor barrier. The inner rooms were insulated between R20 and R30 in addition to the exterior insulation. The inner insulation was done with used high density foam insulation that was re-purposed from
chicken coops. We have lots of old
chicken coops here in Arkansas.
We now have really great storage conditions for our produce. Plus is is really nice when I want to for example brine a turkey. I can simply put it into the container with the brine solution and put it on the floor of the refrigerator room.
If you have any questions, fire away.
Sincerely,
Ralph