DC-POWERED REFRIGERATION

Alpicool CF-45 Portable AC/DC, 48-quart Refrigerator/Freezer -- $319

***** MULTIPLE ADDENDA BELOW *****

Keeping food and beverages cold when traveling has always required ice.  And ice melts, so ya gotta buy more ice.  And more ice.  Et freaking cetera.  At two bucks a bag, you could spend $40 or so just on ice in three-week trip.  And if you start robbing the cooler to fill your 30-ounce tumbler with cubes, then you might even find yourself going through two bags a day.

That is unacceptable.  Using that same space for a refrigerated cabinet makes a whole lot more sense.  The trouble has always been, how do you keep the box chillin’?  It could be powered by the cigarette lighter as you drive, but what happens when you shut the car off? 

That’s where solar power comes in, Lynn.  As long as the sun doesn’t burn out, my stuff will be chilled.  And if the sun does burn out, well, we will all have much bigger problems than tepid beer.

There are several brands of portable fridges out there.  Dometic is the top o’ th’ line, but it carries the top o’ th’ line prices too.  The size I was looking for ran in the $900 range.  That’s a whole lot of bags of ice. 

I’m sure Dometics are nice, but, come on, it’s a compressor some freon and an insulated box.  How much different can it really be?  I could get almost three Alpicools for one Dometic.

But there were several other brands that all hovered around the same modest amount as Alpicool.  Many of them also looked alike, as if the same Chinese manufacturer was making them for several distributors (which, I’m sure, is exactly the case). 

Alpicool – whose motto is “We make you feel cool.” – made a unit that had separate freezer and refrigerator compartments, but it went out of stock with no promise of returning.  I had to suspect there were too many problems with it.  I ordered the next best one available – the CF-45 -- which can be both, just not at the same time. 

It arrived in working order – hooray! – and I plugged it in to the AC power and got it cooling.  After a little while, it dropped from room temp to 35F and stayed there.  Nice.

I took it out to the van and plugged it into the DC socket of the Maxoak.  It hummed contentedly.  So did I.

Solar had not yet been connected.  The wires from the panel and the ones from the power pack (Maxoak) were not long enough to reach.  This allowed for a great test, as it turns out.  The Maxoak had just been charged up to 100% from AC power, so I plugged the fridge into it and waited to see how long it would be before the battery power ran out. 

The Alpicool pulls 5 amps, and the regulated DC outlet on the EB240 feeds it 13V, meaning it draws 65 watts of power.  That, by itself, would mean close to 40 hours of electricity, which would not suck at all.

But, that 65 watts only happens while the fridge’s compressor is on.  The compressor shuts off when the desired temp is reached, so much of the time it draws no power at all.  Of course, sitting in a closed and super-heated van all day makes that little motor come on more often, but, even so, the Alpicool ran at a steady 35 degrees for more than 72 hours before the Maxoak ran out of juice.  That was damn good! 

Now that solar is connected, the sun easily tops off what little power the fridge draws during the day or the previous night. 

The Alpicool CF45 does also function as a freezer, but it will be the whole unit, not just one of the two compartments.  It allegedly will chill down to -4F.  So, if I ever do decide that I want ice, I can make my own.     =)

ADDENDUM #1:  THE FREEZER

Bouge RV 9-Quart 12V Camping Cooler -- $240

DOQAUS Easy Release, Stackable Ice Cube Trays with Covers, 4 pack -- $11

Eighteen months later.

Alpy has been great, chilling food and bev at a steady 36° with nary a glitch.  The only interruptions have been due to its power source (i.e., the Maxoak Bluetti EB240) bottoming out when I forgot to plug the solar in.  Duh.

As content as I was with kept-cold food, I also wanted to test out Alpy’s ability as a freezer.  More specifically, I wanted to make my own ice.  Lots of it.  Never-buy-a-bag-again kind of ice.

So, I pushed the “-“ button down and down to “0” (F), lowered in 6 ice cube trays filled with water, and went home. 

Now, I gotta tell you about the ice cube trays (ICTs).  Yeah, an ICT is an ICT, come on, right?  Well, these things are the turtle’s toes, baby. 

Made by a company called DOQAUS – pronounced “Jones” -- they are the standard 14-cube tray.  A 16.9 fl. oz. water bottle will fill up two of them.  Nothing so unusual there.  In fact, they’re probably a tad smaller than what you’d typically picture.

I got my first 4-pack via an Amazon error.  I ordered spare batteries for my camera and instead they sent me a USB microphone on a tiny tripod and these ICTs.  I called the ‘zon and they apologized, acknowledged that sending those things back would cost more than they were worth and told me to keep them.

The mic has never been used, but these ICTs intrigued me.  For one thing, they had covers.  Yes, covered ICTs!  For another, the hard plastic tray had green silicon soft bottoms on each cube compartment.  So if you only need one cube, just push from the bottom and pop out your cube.  Nice.

The killer, though, was that they came with a User Manual.  Yes, a User Manual for ICTs.  My $1000 iPhone didn’t come with a User Manual, but my ICTs did!  And it’s in SIX languages!  English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Japanese. 

“Geben Sie Wasser in die Eiswurfelachale aber nicht uber die MAX-Wasserstandlinie,” said Adolf to Eva.  But Eva already knew better than to fill beyond the max line, so she flipped him off.  (Hey, coulda happened.)

So, the freezer worked great!  Alpy held the temp at zero and I had me 84 solid, not-at-all-wet cubes.

Now, for the last several years, I’ve been beveragizing out of one of those 30-ounce, stainless steel tumblers that YETI makes, and it turns out that 14 of these slightly smaller cubes only fills it about halfway, maybe a little more.  And when you’re pouring room temperature Coke over ice, those cubes start dwindling right away.  And my Cokes were indeed room temp (i.e. van temp, i.e., summer-in-Florida hot), because they were no longer being chilled in my fridge.  They were melting that cherished ice fast.  Hmmmm. 

So, I made the command decision to make two acquisitions.  One: more DOQAUS ICT’s (easily acquired, inexpensive).  Two: a smaller DC fridge/freezer to complement Alpy (easily acquired, but much more $$$).

I could not get a full-sized, 48-quart unit like Alpy is.  Not enough room anywhere.  But I did have room for a unit about a third that size up against the side of the sink ensemble (if that indeed could be clasified as an “ensemble.”)

BougeRV was having a sale, as luck would have it, and I procured their 9-Quart Camping Cooler model.  It holds 12 cans, lying on their sides, and, well, nothing else. 

But, as a freezer, it could hold 7 ICTs and, well, nothing else.   I take the top 1 or 2, as needed, remove the ice (Step 4 in the User Manual), refill them forthwith, and put them back in, but on the bottom.  Unless I totally binge on my ice, those 1 or 2 should be solid and ready by the time they get back to the top.

So, I’ll be doing some trials to see which way will work best:  freeze Alpy and fridge Bouge, or vice versa.

With Alpy at 0°, I can keep 8 ICTs, plus a bag/bin of cubes, and/or some frozen food (Hot Pockets, ice cream samiches, and such).  Bougie, then, would be for Cokes and/or refrigerated food (cold cuts, leftovers, chicken, etc.). 

If I flip the duties, Bougie Wougie can hold ICT’s and I can go back to using Alpy for food and chilled bevs.  Depends on how much of which I want to store.

It kinda came down to this choice:

  Refrigerated:

     Chicken:  whole, from deli; eaten cold, or MW’ed with rice and gravy.  Yum.

     Cold cuts:  ham / turkey / chicken / roast beef, with Miracle Whip, on buns

     Hamburger:  ground chuck, with cheese and Miracle Whip, on a Ball Park bun

     Cheese:  Kraft singles, American – for burgers and samiches

     Pudding:  Jello chocolate

     Salad:  Fresh Express, American blend, with chicken, tuna, chicksal or ham

     Dressing:  Thousand Island (lite) or Ranch (lite)

     Canned Pineapple:  Dole’s, of course

  Frozen:

     Stouffer’s Dinners:

         Lasagna with Meat Sauce, large size, 2X meat

         Chicken Parmesan with Pasta

         Fish Filet with Mac-n-Cheese

         (Occasional others)

     Hot Pockets: 

         BIG ‘n’ BOLD Chicken Bacon Ranch (if I can find ‘em)

         Meatballs & Mozzerella

         Four Cheese Pizza

         Steak & Cheddar, Crisp & Buttery Crust

         Ham & Cheese

     Ice Cream:  Breyer’s Chocolate, or Vanilla – how basic, but so gooood

     Ice Cream Sandwiches!!

     Waffles!  With the maple syrup from Century Messenger Farm in Ohio (not frozen)

            Tough choice!!!  I mean, either way I’m happy.  I won’t be stuck with either arrangement; I could switch them up every day if I wanted to.  I won’t, but I could. 

Now, one thing I discovered by chance was that the upper compartent of Alpy does not go below freezing.  I can store 12 cans up there and they get really cold, but they don’t freeze.  Beer stored up there is sensational.  Cokes are good too; they get almost to the point of turning slushy. 

So, yeahh, I hear ya:  Why did you need the 2^nd fridge then?  Well, I didn’t know that about the upper compartment until I already bought Bougie.

That is a true boon, though, since the Cokes would monopolize the Bouge as a reefer and leave no room for food.  With those cans in Alpy’s penthouse, I can have some of BOTH lists and be extra happy.

Now for the down side.  There is definitely an impact on the electrical supply, and I’m still wrapping my head around that.  It gets complicated.

As a reefer, Alpy uses 35-40 watts, but only when the compressor is on, which is, I’d guess, about a third of the time (i.e., 20 minutes out of each hour, or 8 hours total out of each day).  If that guess is right, then Alpy is using 320 Wh (watt-hours) in a day:  40 watts times 8 hours.  With Bluetti’s 2400 Wh capacity, that should cover a week’s worth of chilling.

As a freezer, though, the compressor is on a lot more.  The wattage seems a bit higher – like 50-ish --  but it also has to run more to keep its innards at 0° than it does at 36°.  Makes sense, yes?  I can’t give a really good estimate yet, since I don’t have the leisure to sit next to it and time the periods that it is humming.

If Alpy runs 50% of the time as a freezer, now we’re talking 600 Wh.  If it runs 66% of the time, we’re up to 800 Wh. 

With Bougie added to the loop, the DC load draw increases a lot.  Whichever way I use them I have a freezer at 600-800 Wh and a reefer at 320 Wh – more than a kilowatt-hour -- running simlutaneously.  Big difference!

So, as counterintuitive as it might seem, I tried switching my power duties to the EcoFlow Delta.  It only stores 1260 Wh, so running both appliances will drain it much faster.  HOWEVER, Delta charges five times faster than Alpy does.

I’ve come out in the morning and seen Delta down to 50% or less, and when I check back at noon on a sunny day, it’s up to 80%, and is full-up again by 2 PM – all while still running both chillers.  Delta is pulling in 200+ watts from the solar panel, which more than makes up for the 80, or 40, or 0 that it might be putting out at any given time.  Alpy can’t recharge fast enough to keep up.

And when shore power is available (i.e., plug-in AC outlet), Delta can go from E to F in 80 minutes (Alpy takes 5-8 hours).  A 50% top-off is 45 minutes, not even enough time for the ice to unfreeze.

So, I think Delta has won the job.  Alpy can comfortably provide power for the DC and AC electric needs -- except the microwave, which needs Delta’s 1800W inverter for the whole 2-4 minutes that I use it.

ADDENDUM #2:  ALPICOOL OUT, VEVOR IN

Another 8 months later

            True to the company motto, the Alpicool had made me feel cool, and did so for more than two years, running without respite for all but a few hours of it, serving alternately as reefer or freezer.

            To be fair to Alpy, he was designed to be an either/or – reefer OR freezer, that is -- but his arrangement provided a bonus.  The floor of the smaller “upper” compartment (above where the compressor was contained) is significantly higher than the floor of the main compartment, so the whole “cold air sinks” thing came into play.  The zero-degree air dove deep, but that heavy cold did not lift all the way above the dividing wall, meaning that the smaller “upper” compartment got quite cold – around 34˚ F. – but never cold enough to actually freeze anything.

            This was, in fact, ideal.  The big space held the ice cube trays, the ice cream, the frozen dinners and the bottle of Captain, while the smaller “upper” space was a tidy home for a dozen 12-ounce cans of cold refreshing goodness. 

            But 24 months took its toll on the big chiller.  I was in California when the shit went down.  It had started back in Colorado, when I noticed that my ice was kinda wet and my ice cream pretty soft.  Hmmm.  Alpy’s control panel had stopped working months ago, so there were no adjustmenst I could make.

            In an attempt to lessen the strain on Alpy, I swapped the freezer duty over to Bougie.  This meant ice only from then on, since that 9-quart unit was too small to put anything else in it.  No more frozen goodies.   =(

            Alpy could still refrigerate, which required much less power, so I changed my shopping approach over to cold cuts and the like to keep him filled and useful (and to keep me fed and contented).

            But, by my brief stay by the bay in Monterrey, hey hey, Alpy would say, “No way, Jose” all day, OK?  Actually, all he was able to do was hum.  There was no chilling going on, just this innocuous, useless humming.  He might have worked as a cooler, but that would mean buying ice, which would kinda defeat the purpose, y’know?

There was no sense using DC power to keep food at 77 degrees.  I needed a replacement, and pronto.

            With Amazon available and Wal-Mart as a capable back-up, and the large metropolitan area of San Francisco around me, I figured this would be a snap.

            But it was not.

            Amazon had a similar model in the right price range, so I tried to order it.  The brand was Vevor, who I had never heard of, but, WTF, it’s not like I had heard of Alpicool either.  It looked OK, about the same capacity (48-quarts), but a little more of a cube than Alpy.  The Vevor unit was about $240, so it cost even less than the Bouge RV 9-quart chillbox.  Check, check, let’s ring it up!

The trouble was that I had no place for them to send it.  And, even more problematic, the delivery date range was like 10 days:  between-this-Tuesday-and-a-week-from-Friday kind of thing. 

I’m on the move, man.  I can’t be hanging out for a week-plus waiting for a damn box.  Plus, my grub needs chillin’ now. 

So, not entirely thrilled with all that, I tabled that notion and turned to Wal-Mart.  Their website showed a few suitable DC reefer-freezers, so I tried to order one that I could just buy in-store and walk out with. 

The web site would not let me do that, though.  I went to the sites of several specific stores in the general area, figuring it was an availability thing, but none of them would admit to having one on the shelf.  Every single one of them wanted to ship it to me. 

I went to two stores in person, but neither had such an item in stock.  I guess it makes sense.  It would not be a big seller at any store.  Keep them in your hubs and send them out as ordered.  I could understand that.

So I got back online and set up a purchase:  “fiiiine, ya bastids, ship me the damn chiller, but make it snappy.”

Nope.  I do have a Wal-Mart account – yeah, I know, cut me some slack, I’m homeless, fer crissake – and there are two addresses listed on it:  my last residence in Key West (3600 miles away) and my brother’s address in New England (3400 miles away) – and those are the ONLY two that Wal-Mart would ship to.  I was not allowed to enter a new address.  WTF??

Now, I was very willing to drive for a few hours to pick this Vevor thing up – I honestly would have gone as far as Los Angeles, about 8-10 hours away, since I might as well go there anyway – but taking the time and gas money to go across the continent for a $240 reefer would be more than stupid.  Surely, though, some warehouse or hub in the SF area would have one that I could just pick up at their dock.  Save them the trouble and expense of shipping it out.

I tried appaealing to W-M on the phone and got no satisfaction at all.  The dude was a total douche too.  He’s at his computer, telling me, “yes, we have those in stock.”

            I ask, “where, which location?”

“I can’t tell you that.” 

Whaaaat????  “What do you mean you can’t tell me that??”

“I don’t have that information.”  Man, it almost sounded like he was chuckling.

“How do you know you have it then?”

“The screen says so.”

“Does it tell you how many?”

“Yes.”

“So you should be able to find out how many at which location?  Home Depot does that.  Almost all places do that.  How can you possibly keep inventory if you don’t do that?”

“It doesn’t say.”

“Can you find out, please?”

“No, I won’t be able to find that out.”

I was steaming by now.  “Well, can you have one sent to one of the Pick-Up Stores that you guys keep advertising lately?  I can get it there.  The web site says there’s one about an hour from here.”

“No, I can’t do that.”

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.  “Why … NOT?”

“It’s too big.”

“You ship these things ALL THE TIME.  It is NOT too big to ship!”

“Too big for the Pick-Up Store, sirrrr.  They don’t have room to keep large packages there.”

“They won’t be keeping it.  I will be there as soon as it arrives.  Just tell me when.”

“I can’t do that.”  Not the slightest attempt to be helpful.  He was taking joy in denying me.  But, yeah, I know, it’s freaking Wal-Mart.  I should have known.

Vexed, irked, and exasperated, I told him to do something impolite instead and hung up.  (Actually, I did not “hang” anything “up”, but you know what I mean.)

I was sitting in the WalMart parking lot all that time, so I decided I’d give it a whirl face-to-face inside.  How much worse could it be?

Alas, the in-person approach was not much better; instead of insolence I got ignorance.  Nobody in Customer Service had a clue about online anything. 

One woman listened politely, clearly did not understand, but was pinning her hopes on the word “online” and said I needed to talk to the gentlemen behind the red door around the corner.

Skeptical but trusting, I went there and saw a blank door, closed.  I knocked.  An 18-year-old boy opened the door, looking like he had just tucked his shirt back in.  It was just some closet or janitor’s room or something.  I think I had interrupted his, um, reveries.

I told him I was sent to him about online orders and deliveries and pick-up stores.  He nodded in a kind of stoned way, with a condescending another-old-guy-needs-help-using-his-phone attitude, I-got-this.

Then, as soon as I began to explain what I wanted to do – buy this online, have it shipped to a store and pick it up there – he got this deer-in-the-headlights look and froze up.  This old man had clearly leap-frogged right over his rudimentary teeno knowledge of how to place an online order.

I stopped in the middle of my third or fourth sentence, and just looked at him, thinking “why did she send me to this useless dumbass?”   (Because she was just trying to get rid of me, of course.)

He clearly wasn’t even listening by now.  He was frantically searching his mind for someone else he could dump me to.

I shook my head, mutttered “fugging useless,” turned and walked out. 

Once back in Blue Maxx, it occurred to me that going to the source might be better than going to the middle man.  So, I went to Vevor’s web site, poked around for maybe a minute and was very pleased to find the exact same item – for $50 LESS!

I called the phone number – yes, they actually display one -- got a human almost immediately, set up the buy, and he arranged for it to be sent to the FedEx depot just north of Monterrey where I could pick it up in less than 48 hours.

Jackpot.  Done.  Now why couldn’t Amazon or Wal-Mart have done that??

Anyway, two days later, after receiving my your-package-has-arrived text, I picked up the box, took it BM and opened it up.  I started laughing immediately.  It did not match the picture on the web site; instead, it was an EXACT duplicate of Alpy!  The only difference was the logo on the side.  Perfect!  No learning curve here, just plug and play, baby!

And Vevor works like a charm.  I even run him on ECO mode and he still keeps my stuff frosty cold.  I could probably run him for a week without tanking Delta Max.

V for Vevor, and V for Victory! 

ADDENDUM #3:  BOUGE BAGS IT, BREVINO BETTER

AUSRANVIK Car Refrigerator 21 Quart Car Cooler/Freezer - $169

Another 3 months later

Just as Alpy had done, Bouge started to lose his cool.  This was unexpected.  Alpy had been a cheapo purchase and I got more than two years out of him.

Bouge was a bit more of a splurge:  it cost ¾ as much money as Alpy, but for less than ¼ of the capacity, and did not even last 18 months.  WTF, Bouge??

I had trusted the Bouge name, and I was let down in all areas.  I’ll never buy Bouge again.  You can, if you like, and best o’ luck to ya.  Based on my experience, you’ll need it. 

And you could see it coming too.  There were several times when I’d open up the B, eager for frosty goodness and find soggy tepidity because it had just decided to shut off overnight.  Maybe some little burp in the DC feed from D-Max was enough to piss the little Bouger off so he shut down and pouted all night.  This happened, I’d say, about twice a month.  That’s bad performance from a very uncomplicated appliance.

Then the settings buttons stopped working, so he was stuck on MAX and I couldn’t switch down the more power-friendly ECO.  He was also stuck on centigrade temperature.  Not a big deal, all in all, but coupled with the other quirks, it was annoying.

The recalcitrant little 9-quart runt could not even handle refrigeration duty anymore, let alone the more demanding freezer task.  He had to go, and a replacement had to be found.

Oddly enough, rather just just toss Bougie on the scrap heap (there wasn’t one handy). I brought him inside and plugged him in via his AC cord.  Lo and behold, he works just fine.  So, while I am on this unretired winter in Key West, I’ll at least use him for cold food at work.  Once it is time to go again, he’ll stay behind.

So, back to Amazon to search the DC reefer world.  I selected one made by Kuppet, whoever they are.  I was 22.5” long, so it was going to stick out about 5 inches beyond the cabinet.  I searched more, but that seemed to be about the best I could do.  The cost was more reasonable – about $200 for a 36-quart unit (4X the capacity of Bougie for $80 less) – so I pulled the trigger and waited out my designated 7-day period. 

After 8 days, I consulted Amazon.  The site informed me that the shipment had been delayed.  Grrrrr.

I checked again two days later, and there was no trace that I had ever placed the order.  I had not been charged, so that part was OK, but WTF happened to the transaction?  Shouldn’t I have at least gotten a notice that the product was not available after all?  But no.  Poof, and it was as if it never happened.

Start againnn.

OK, hey here’s a very similar one, made by Euhomy (you homey, you), and it was Amazon’s Choice.  Oooooh.  Ahhhh.  Must be gooood.  It was the same size as the phantom Kuppet, but the price was $20 less.  So, OK, that’ll work.  I’ll make your choice mine as well.  Here’s your damn money, now send it to me.

Again, a 7-day wait.  And again, a no-show.  This time, when I tracked it, I was informed that “There is a delay in shipping.  We will e-mail you when the item ships.”  Oh, great.  I picked another winner. 

I gave it another few days, saw no change in the message, so went back to searching.  This time, though, I found what I had been seeking all along:  a taller, less-long unit.  [I had to word it that way because if I had said “a taller, shorter unit,” I would have sounded like such a dumbass.]  It’s a smaller capacity, but at 21 quarts, it’s more than double the Booger, but it’s just 18” long, so it is a perfect match for the 18” long cabinet!  Annnnnd, it cost even less!  Just $169!  I want it I want it I want it.  Send it to me!!

And this time, they did.  It still took a freaking 8 days.  Whatever happened to that “48 hour free shipping” that we all used to pay for??  What, exactly, are we paying even more for now?  I don’t need all yer damn videos and music, Priiiime.  I want pronto deliveries.

The brand name I ordered was Ausranvik but when it arrived, it said BREVINO on the side.  Maybe that’s the model name?  The Ausranvik Brevino.  That just dances off the tongue, doesn’t it?

Well, Brev is OK by me.  The temp controls are simple, it chills great, it is spacious, it has an interior light, the lid is sturdy and snug, and its compressor runs totally silently.  So far, I am a big fan! 

One issue, though, which I noticed as soon as I opened it, is the two-level interior is not friendly to ice cube trays.  The deep zone is just not quite long enough to fit them.  The only way ICTs can fit would be to sit on the shallow level and hang over the deep level.  Yeah, it could be done, but it would be pretty awkward while on the move.  The much simpler solution is to keep using Vevor as the freezer – which he rocks at – and let the newbie Brev be a reefer full-time.

Brev has a silver front, back, and lid, with royal blue plastic sides.  It vents through its sides, which is perfect.  If it vented out the back, that would have been a problem because of the cedar paneling it is up against.  I bungee it to the cabinet so it won’t topple.  (I did that with Bougie too.)  I put two blocks of wood behind it so I can open the lid all the way.

How about that picture, huh?  Good luck trying to close the damn lid!  Not keeping much cold with the box wide open. 

And what exactly are all those things??  A pink apple?  Is that a big unpackaged lump of cranberry sauce??  And what is that weird green lump in front of it, a wadded-up ball of guacamole?

Advertising sure is strange sometimes…

Brev looks good in blue and silver – and I do like blue, that’s true, Sue – but he just did nbot fit in with the nature tones décor of the living room.  So, I took him into the shop at work, set him on the table, and got out the still-half-full can of Red Mahogany stain that I had used on the new floor.   Some blue tape was applied to the edges of the silver metal, and, being careful not to slop satin into the exchaust vents, I set about the task of turning blue to brown. 

The first coat left some thin areas where the blue showed through, but a second coat easily took care of that issue.  It actuially worked much better than paint would have; it spread quite easily on the smooth surface and dried very quickly.  Now I have me a darn good-lookin’ brown-and-silver reefer box!

As with the larger Vevor (and Alpy before him), I keep them covered with a brown towel.  It’s mostly for aesthetic reasons -- making the shapes blend in more like furniture and less like appliances -- but there is a practical purpose as well:  insulation.  It gets mighty warm in the Belly o’ th’ Blue Whale, and having a towel hanging over the sides of the lid is likely helpful in keeping cold in and warm out.

So, shit happens and life moves on.  Alpy and Bougie are nothing but memories.  Vevor and Brevino are the new Commodores Of Cold.