Do Yeti cooler hacks work? Part 2! 

The small cooler most likely did better than the larger coolers because the 2 quarts of ice only had to cool down 8 quarts of 70 degree air instead of 40 quarts of 70 degree air.

Yeah those foam coolers are really under appreciated. I took duck tape and wrapped a foam cooler to protect it and I love it. It lasted about 2 years until I crushed it by accident.

Fill them up entirely with cubed ice then redo the test. Each cooler has a different volume. If you put the same amount of ice in each then there will be different volumes of air that will skew your results.

There are 3 main forms of heat transfer: Conduction, Convection, Radiation. Shifting from one form of heat transfer to another induces inefficiency in the rate of heat transfer. The efficiency of convective heat transfer is directly proportional to the velocity of the air. If you have an open cavity (like the top of your cooler), it has the capacity to form an internal convective current. If you break up the cavity into smaller portions perpendicular to the direction of heat flow (think a bunch of thin sheets laid on top of each other with spacing) you will reduce the heat transfer rate. This is because the heat will have to pass through a convective zone, transfer into a conductive zone, and then back into a convective zone many times, reducing efficiency of heat transfer. This is the principle that foam insulation works from. The air pockets are small convective cavities with extremely poor convective heat transfer rates. So your idea of filling the top with foam was a good idea. Here's the rub: That foam insulation you used needs moisture to cure. Usually it pulls the moisture from the atmosphere. The insulation near the holes you drilled cured, and then cut off access to any additional moisture reaching the rest of the insulation. If you cut open your top you'll find it's full of goop. One other fun thing about convection is that liquids are much more efficient at heat transfer than gasses. All of the above explains why the crappy foam cooler performed so much better than crappy plastic ones.

Well if you end up doing another test, for kicks and giggles try putting the cheap a$$ foam cooler inside one of the igloos (assuming it fits) and see what happens compared to the expensive ones

the only reason the Ozark did better than the Yeti, is that the wheels may have left a gap between the cooler and the warm pavement. The Yeti, with its flat bottom right on the pavement, might have done better, if one end was shimmed up 1/8 inch, to mimic the gap caused by the wheels on the Ozark. It might be fun to re do the test with all the coolers propped up on 1 inch spacers, to reduce the conducted heat from the concrete surface.

Thanks for the second round of testing! My $0.02 worth: the mass of the foam added to the lid retains heat (versus ice temperature), and the rocks on top of the 3 cheaper ones did too. I think the spray foam you’re using is designed to stop air flow, not as insulation. The styrofoam is lighter and works better. Get them all off the ground, and keep them out of the sun for your next test? This has been worthwhile, much appreciated!

Hope who ever has the ankle monitor gets of parole/probation soon. Thanks for making the update.

I love how everyone in the comments are suddenly cooler engineers

Access to vids at your fingertips on how to mod the lid + what a yeti looks like cut in half are what makes RU-vid great. Vids like this with experimentation to know whether or not to waste your time doing the mod or waste your money on a yeti are what makes RU-vid phenominal

Yes... Styrofoam coolers are fragile, but are really good, especially considering their price. There is no substitute for insulation thickness, but they do nicely. Best cooler I ever bought was an old igloo extreme "5 day"... but I could never justify the price tag of a yeti either. Best cooler I ever owned however was home made using pink foamboard insulation in a wood shell. used some fiber glass to seal the interior, though you COULD gut a cooler for its plastic liner (probably cheaper) it had about 3" of insulation plus 1" wood and weighed almost as much as my truck :)

The boxes should be precooled to the same temperature. The Igloo coolers were hotter than the Yeti and Ozark Trail, so ice was lost cooling the Igloos to the same starting temp. Also the overall outside area of the boxes matters. Heat transfer is directly proportional to area. The Styrofoam box also had less mass that had to be cooled down. Great experiment. Thanks for all the work you did.

Your spray foam may have warped the lid just enough to interrupt its seal. I would use low expansion spray foam. There would be less chance of it warping the lid as it expands and cures. It would do a better job cooling if the coolers were filled with more ice.

This test was all over the place, so it was kind of hard to follow, but informational anyways.

get a thick Styrofoam cooler like they use for shipping. I bought them, seal the inside with silicone door/window calk then spread a thin layer all of the inside surface. Then I get good quality packing tape and put three layers on all edges and corners then two layers in two directions on top of the three layers corners and all surfaces. They are phenomenal and durable with the tape. I may put a layer of color style duct tape on that. I have a medical condition that needs areas of my body cold and I build them into a cryo circulating system at home and my car. I have tried most cryo units on the market and they lack to say the least.

Ozark Trail does a great job. I have the smaller cooler with the handle and works awesome. No need to spend a bunch of $ when the Ozark works great at a much cheaper price.

🤣 As far as I'm concerned, all of the coolers would be just fine. I use my Igloo cooler in three primary situations - road trips (air conditioning), two-day weekend RV camping trips (moderate, no direct sun), or a few hours on the boat (hot & sunny). In every situation, it maintains my food & drinks for the normal duration just fine.

Not sure how true it is but I've been told that the Ozark coolers have the same formula as the Yeti coolers. The guy who invented them had a divorce and his ex wife sold the idea to wal-mart and that's why they're so good. People still buy Yeti for the brand name but the Ozark is better for the price.

Great test and super fun to watch! Thanks for all the effort. I'm as surprised as you were that the hack did nothing. I hacked my even cheaper cooler the same way, and it "might" keep ice a little longer than before, but that may just be my perception

Thank you for your time and effort! really good to know the results.

Yeti vs argument. That's like a Harley vs argument. If you own one, you're pretty proud of it and carries status. I ride a Triumph (Honda before that) that costs a third of the price and outruns any Harley on the road... and I don't spend half my day polishing chrome...I ride it.... without trailering it somewhere. So... depends if you want the status.

Fascinating! And a lot of fun! Watched the first one too. My only thought on the two original (red and white coolers) would be to weigh them to see if one had more insulation. Great job!

I strongly suspect that adding a weatherstrip gasket to the lid to prevent air infiltration is far more effective than putting foam in the lid. When I did this, I also added a toggle latch to be able to put some down pressure on the lid to seal it firmly against the weatherstripping. The lids aren’t heavy enough on their own to push down hard enough to make a tight seal.

the little foam cooler probably did so well because its internal volume was smaller, so the heat capacity of the ice had less thermal mass to work on inside the cooler

Thanks! You saved me a ton of time and bother!! I just got home from the hardware store and was getting ready to fill the lids. Now i won't bother. I hate that sprayfoam insulation stuff. It gets everywhere and doesn’t come off clothing... eye glasses... skin... So I'll add weather stripping, hinges and latches, and make a box, or a box within a box, with Reflectix insulation and call it a day. I love my old Coleman 12-pack size coolers.

I wonder how well a small white styrafoam inside a larger one with an air gap would do? It was fairly impressive on its own!😂

Great job I think the size makes a difference also get an aquarium thermometer to test the water temp I think that would be super accurate

Question: What kind of cooler do you have? Answer: Yes

Thank you for the test...I'm going with the Ozark trail.

Thank you for taking the time to do this. Great video!

i like the video, but seems to me that the red coolers being hollow or even lightly filled insolation as i have seen in other videos, the would have done much better than the foam cooler, reason is the red attacks heat from the sun, white foam does not, so putting the foam cooler inside the red cooler would probably be close the the ozark trail water melt. I did that same hack but but what i did was take foam 2 inch sheets and and placed inside the red cooler walls and on bottom creating a cooler inside and then put a piece of silver insolation blanket on top of ice under lid, the ice stayed for for 3 days in 97 degree weather while camping. I would like to add a little tip here, draining the cooler each morning did seem to allow the ice to keep longer. If you do decide to cut into the red cooler, maybe just drill some holes around the top to look down into the sides, if it is open then maybe use great stuff in the sides and bottom then you would have a totally hacked cooler that might just be worth giving it a try myself.

Next time you do the yeti hack on a cooler lid make sure you rinse the inside of the lid out with some water before spraying in the foam because any leftover water will add the moisture needed to properly cure the foam. My guess is the density of the lid did absorb and hold a little more heat than dead air space would have . Your small cooler performed well because of the lower volume . The real reason the thicker coolers perform better is because sitting in the sun on warm pavement, means you lost heat through conduction through the bottoms of the coolers and the side walls. Not just a lid. The last thing you can do to improve the quality of a cheap cooler is to take those reflective lined, reusable shopping bags and use those as internal liners/dividers in your cooler . I suspect, if you do, you did your tests while keeping the coolers in the shade and on grass that you will find the cheaper, coolers will perform better . And the thicker coolers will perform about the same And if you wanna see something super crazy .. find a cardboard box. That's just a couple inches larger than your cheap Styrofoam cooler and lined that cardboard box with a mylar emergency blanket, then stuff it with some layers of newspaper between the mylar lined cardboard box and put inside the box your cheap Styrofoam cooler... and stuff more newspaper around the sides and top And you'll see how crazy good insulation newspaper actually is . Aside from the obvious problems with keeping the cardboard cooler dry , you'd be astonished at how effective is

Very thorough, good information. Thanks for making these videos

Great Review, Good Information. Thanks Brother.

You can’t just use the same amount of ice in each cooler. You actually have to figure out the real capacity of each cooler and put in the same ratio at the same density of ice. The larger the cooler, the more surface area and volume to cool.

The hacked cooler had water in it that means the lid is not tight.

Ozark Trail for the win!!😂 I have 2 and am quite happy with them.

This was a worthy effort. Your attempted scientific process looked sound.

I bet if you put the weather stripping back on, and add a couple latches to hold the lid down tight, you will see a difference with the foam in the lid. Foam does insulate better than air, despite what the 'engineers' on here are saying. The factory lid doesn't seal well. You could fill the lid with aerogel and it still wouldn't make a difference with the poor seal. That would mean another test! haha

Since you swapped lid covers, you should have used the same type and amount of ice (10# bags), as the first round, which you didn't, so you can't compare the results, therefore those findings don't count. In both experiments, you should have left the lids open and INSIDE on all the coolers overnight to ensure that all the interior temps were uniform when you began the experiment. That's why you had totally different temps in the coolers to start. In both experiments, they should have been kept INSIDE in order to ensure the air temps didn't fluctuate due to being in a vehicle, sun, rain, cloud cover, different daytime high temps, etc. Should have used the same size foam cooler as the others to ensure they all started off with the same volume of air. So many different and major inconsistencies in both instances, that it was all a complete fail.

You need to do the test in a way that would be “fair” for all coolers. Besides the red coolers they are all different sizes . Much like a 6,000 btu air conditioner would cool down a 6x6 room faster then a 12x12 room. There for needing fewer btus to maintain temp. This is why the foam cooler still had ice in it. A much fairer way to do this test is to fill all coolers with ice and see what one last longest.

Great video I was on the fence between a Yeti and Ozark, you just saved me some money. Thanks. lol

All the other coolers didn’t betray the 2A hunting community . LoL 😂 Thanks for the great video and effort

Ozark up on wheels vs yeti sitting on concrete,air can circulate under ozark makes it cooler

prechilling a cooler is such junk.. who the hell has time for all that bs... ya grab a cooler out the garage, throw a bag of ice in it with some drinks and head out. I had Yeti... it's built really well. Annoying to carry around being so heavy. But a $15 igloo and a $350 yeti perform the same in an environment where opened and closed like 10+ times a day on a hot day.. Neither one has ice at the end of the day. Sold that pos yeti.

You should have taken the internal temp of the Ozark Trail chest immediately on opening, just as you did with the Yeti.

(Late to the party, but) IIRC, styrofoam has a higher R value than the insulation used in Coleman-type coolers, & so the styrofoam coolers *do* insulate better & keep things cooler. Until, that is they fall apart. The cheapness of the styrofoam coolers is in their durability (and the usability: keeping the lid on a styrofoam cooler can be a b*itch), not in their absolute insulating power. There may be similar durability/usability differences between in the Ozark Trail & the Yeti coolers. For example, you mentioned that the OT cooler's width was inconvenient compared to the Yeti's; & I noticed that the bottle opener was placed right where it could cause some serious owies. Yetis also come with a bottle opener; but it's more out of the way, hitched to the elastic loops (oh yeah, and, the OT's don't come with elastic hitching loops).

So just to give some ideas of how these coolers work. So think about what happens each time you open any cooler. So any top load cooler freezer refrigerator will stay cooler then any side door. Because what happens when you open them. Hot air rises cool air stay at the lowest place it can So in doing this exercise you would need to improve the sides and bottom first

So my hypothesis.. the key to the Yeti is its overall thickness to prevent temperatures from getting inside. Clearly the Styrofoam is the best candidate to compete with those brands. If there was a way to modify the $5 dollar cooler, such as maybe adding more foam to the sides and base, it would increase efficiency. If that works you could then work on a video to modify a foam cooler to have the same aesthetics(plastic casing, latching lid etc). If you get the same results from it as you do a Yeti then you've found yourself a DIY budget build OR possibly something you could fine tune and bring to market as a low cost equivalent to over priced name brand leaders in the industry. Since Styrofoam seems to be the best insulation overall. Happy to sign on as a strategist or R&D if you ever take it that far!

when prechilling, you want to chill the inside, not the outside. best to leave the lids open....

Great test. I think you approached this scientifically, trying to eliminate spurious variables. One thing I have been wondering is if the foam added to the lid turned out too dense so it conducted more heat than a store bought cooler with foam in the lid. It’s not the foam material that creates insulation, it’s the trapped gas bubbles. Maybe the foam didn’t fill the entire void either. I wonder if larger and more vent holes would allow the foam to fill the void and expand to its maximum. If the foam sets before it reaches its maximum expansion, it may actually conduct more heat than the original hollow cheap lid.

If they are setting in the sun you should check exterior surface like you test the ground temp. Different colors will absorb heat from the sun at different rates

Try cutting up the foam cooler and lining the inglo with start it. Double the insulation like the yeti.

The reason why the stock cooler works just as well is because cold air sinks, so lid insulation play an incredibly small role in keeping the contents cool. It's the side and bottom insulation that really matter. That's why they don't insulate the lid. Saves a few $ too. However, where lid insulation can make a difference is when it's sitting in direct sunlight. Helps keep the solar radiation from conducting through the lid. If you really want to "hack" a cheapo cooler, line it with one of those foil emergency blankets or just anything that can reflect radiant heat. Something like that insulation backing I saw behind the studs in your house, or foil HVAC tape.

Guy leaves the Ozark Trail lid open for a few minutes then checks the temperature inside the cooler and proceeds to compare it to the Yeti that he opens and immediately checks temp. Too many variables in this guy's tests that could've been eliminated.

Seeing you pull the ice out of the blue cooler made me chuckle. How many coolers you got man!? Haha

I love Hypothesis this was so much fun I just found your page I hope you do more of these and different things

You always have to prepare a cooler if you want it to keep ice and I’m sure with the hack lid would do better then the not hack lid if you put ice in both over night then dump that out and add the test ice. When I was a kid I can remember the old steel asbestos filled Coleman coolers would keep ice for a week in this Florida heat

If it weee me, I'd put in digital thermometers that have the bilty to report on the temperature drop automatically without havingto open up the coolers. Just fill it up with ice, drop in the temeprature probe, then record the ice melt without having to opene up the cooler. That way you can monitor the result of ice melting.....

good job. i like the frozen containers vs bags of ice.

Maybe the manufacturer of the cheaper cooler is smarter and knows that insulating the top is a waste of money with little benefit. Test the yeti with the lid from the cheaper cooler and see how it performs against its own lid. Yeah, you'll need to use some weather stripping and tape to seal it up or cut the yeti lid open and remove the insulation and super glue it back.

I just today figured I would give the hack a try and test for myself inasmuch as I have two identical Igloo coolers. I noticed something interesting. Even though I empties nearly an entire can of foam in several drilled holes till it squirted freely out of all the holes. Much of it either emptied out on its own or never got full as I can tell by squeezing the lid that there are large areas with voids. With as hard (stiff)as some of the stuff i used dries. there is no way I should be able to squeeze any part of the lid. Im thinking that maybe the lid would be better off filled in stages rather than all at once. This would possibly explain the lack of performance.

The phone cooler came in third because it was the smallest less hot air in the cooler to chill

Interesting test. The Yeti and Ozark Trail probably have much thicker insulation all around than the Igloos. The wheels on the OT may also allow for a slight air gap between the hot pavement and the bottom of the cooler. Foam coolers are great but it benefits in your test by having a smaller foot size so there is less square footage for heat to transfer from the pavement. The modified lid isn't a factor here because the vast majority of the heat is coming from the pavement. Your modified insulated lid may be holding the heat in as it is absorbed from the pavement. Enjoyed the video.

The reason this does not work is that the empty space in the lids is the insulation, (kind of like a double pane window) when you add the foam it transfers the heat to inside the cooler. Maybe try argon gas instead, also like a double pane window.

The winner is the foam cooler just add a rubber band to close the lead instead of a rock because it has loads of thermal mass is effectively a heater on top of the cooler.

Does one side of your Jeep get more sun on one side?

I wonder if your insulation worked so well that it didn't allow the internal temperature to change and decrease after initially adding the ice.... 🤔

the way you eep food cold is how you pack the cooler. If people on expeditions can go out for 10-15, or even 30 days of expeditioning, how do you keep the ice or the cooler cold w/o electricity? Seems to me that all of you Americans are just too busy thinking on how to keep food cold and not how to really make your ice chests much better in packing ice to keep food cold.

Yeti's are like Snap-Off tools and John Deere mowers.....They're all a rip off.

Thanks for doing this.

Of course it doesn't work in full sunlight: you can see light through the lids at the grooves, so you have heat strips inside the cooler! (my old coleman has the same problem).

Hard to compare wal-mart to yeti bc yeti had solid bottom contact against heated pavement - the wheels on the wal-mart gave it a small buffer and I’m guessing at least 50% less direct contact than the yeti…

Hmmm... Welllll hmmm... Since none of the testing started from the same internal cooler temperatures, of course the ones that are initially cooler has a better chance to stay cool longer BECAUSE the heat transfer from internal air to melt the ice doesn't have more work to do per the volume. The ice WORKS to pull the cooler inside temperature down. By containing the ice to 2 quarts, you standardized the surface area where they all can cool roughly the same. Surface area & heat is a magical thing. The higher the SA to volume the slower (longer) it is to heat or cool. The lower the ratio, the faster it is to heat or cool. Example: There's a big difference in roasting an elephant compared to a hummingbird. The same goues for cooling a contained volumetric container (be it a cooler, car, living room, or sports arena). The larger the area, the more energy needed to cool it. Quite a testament to the Yeti & Ozark Trails as they started out cooler and maximized the small amount of ice placed internally and what it was going to do. The one thing that people don't understand about COLD is that when they feel something cold/cool, they are feeling the ABSENSE of HEAT. Kinda like there's standard air pressure and a vacuum. Absence of air pressure. You don't feel a vacuum, you don't feel cold.... You feel no wir pressure or no heat. Has anyone cut an igloo cooler in half to see what they're like on the inside? I'm personally not sure that part of the Yeti cooler hach that probably can't be fixed is the way the lids are made and the illusion of a tight seal the igloos have. There might be a gap of a few micrometers... that can easily allow more heat IN from the outside. The Yeti & Ozark Trails had regular hinges that when shut, seals the inside off from the outside. The styrofoam cooler had a couple things going for it, 1- it was white so it was going to reflect all heat trying to radiate it's way in with minimal effort 2- you must have had somewhat of a snug fit for the lid on to the bottom as we could hear it squeak when they were pressed together snug. 3- I also help that the styrofoam clover was a little smaller too. The most fair test is to do this in your garage where all can have the same starting point.

I thoroughly enjoy this thank you

You didn't drill enough holes in your hacked one. The foam couldn't expand so the air bubbles could not form properly

How do we know all of those coolers are at 62 degrees? Just because you said so, you should have in outside indicator to show the urgent ambient temp

Igloo uses closed cell foam. Ozark and yeti use open cell foam which is three times as much as closed cell foam

So the takeaway is you don't always get what you pay for.

Did rain from the storm really get inside a closed yeti? That must of been one heck of a storm. Or maybe some of the water spilled out of the container, making the ozark margin of victory a little more.

So why didn't you take the temperature of the 1st 3 coolers like you did the yeti and the Ozark trail

It's still great entertainment. Thank you

Coleman xtreme..keeps ice almost as long as the expensive brands for a 1/3 of the price..also has wheels and extension handle

It’s thermal dynamics air is a better insulator than foam sealant but a vacuum would be best

Just found u and really liking what u do keep it up 💯

not enough ice to make it a real test

Love the shed AC!

Alot of people asking ya to do it again, I think you should do it again and jump on one foot while you're loading the ice. When you open the lids make sure you do so slowly and pick up the cups of ice with tongs so your body temperature doesn't affect the ice content ;) of course I'm kidding. These where entertaining for sure :)

I don’t think the igloo coolers have insulation or much of any in the lower portion. We have one of those for work and there doesn’t seem to be any foam in them at all. I think it’s hollow plastic. Cut one open on camera.

The foam that gets sprayed in the lid doesnt cure correctly due to lack of air. It takes air exposure to cure the foam, if you stick a a screw driver in the holes you will probably find a gooey mess.

I have a idea about why it might not have worked. Just a guess, but maybe you put to much foam in the lid and it didn’t expand enough. You said the lid was about 2 pounds heavier than the non filled. The trapped air bubbles in the foam are the insulating property of foam right? Maybe put the minimum amount of foam🎉 in it to fill the lid. You looked to have put A LOT of foam in the first time. Possibly you negated the insulative properly of the foam. I don’t know if that’s possible, just a thought.

I'm wondering if you didn't overfill the lid with the foam causing it to compress as it expanded collapsing the air bubbles that creates your insulating value???

Sealed air Thermal conductivity ( W/(m·K) ) is 0.026, and foam is 0.033🤪( en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_conductivity ). in other word, sealed air is a better insulation ✌. As long as the lid is sealed , no need to spray foam into it.

To be honest, probably don't say to be honest so much. Your lid insulation probably failed as you compressed the foam too much. Multiple holes and only spraying the minimum amount of foam so it can properly expand might have yielded better results, to be honest. Insulating the lid probably works best in bright sun only. Im still not sure you tested in that condition and if you did the compressed foam still might void your results. You need air captured to make foam work. Just like fiberglass insulation cant be compressed

Have you tried filling them completely up with bagged ice?

Right now, Yeti is the only brand out there with a very expensive cooler that no one else can beat because they don't have vacuum sealed partitions. The best water bottles like hydro flask use a double wall vacuum. A vacuum provides zero conduction of temperature exchange and zero convection of temperature exchange. The only conduction it does have is through the lid and the liner used. In most of these cases I believe it is stainless steel. You can put these bottles on black pavement in 105 degree temperature and still have ice the following day. Even if the bottle was black also. Yeti is the only brand that I am aware of with the same technology going into one of their coolers. The YETI V stainless steel cooler. Which is way over priced for a cooler. But there isn't anyone that I know of giving them competition.

The only unfair thing in this test is the actual volume of air space inside the coolers.

lol you need foam all around the ice. The only thing the lid foam is doing is helping with the sun. Foam the bottom and do the test again.

The only thing I noticed is that you placed the ice bottle going into the hacked cooler on the hot sidewalk for a few seconds before placing it in the cooler. Still curious why the hack does not seem to work.

Prediction styrofoam coolers going to do the best you're going to get the same results with the igloo coolers and I'm curious to see if the yeti does better than the cheap igloo coolers Let's get closer to that yeti. I think the start of home cooler will perform the best. Also air is the best insulation that's why storm windows have an air gap. It doesn't need to be a vacuum in fact a vacuum wouldn't trap heat you would need air.