Home › Heating, Lighting, and Refrigeration › Heating, Lighting, and Refrigeration: Build

Heating, Lighting, and Refrigeration: Build

To Build Ice Houses, make a frame of two or three joists, supported on posts raised a foot or more from the ground, and have a shed roof sloping to the north. Board up the outside and make another frame inside 10 or 12 inches from the outer boarding, and fill in the space between with shavings, sawdust, or spent tan bark packed as solidly as possible. Lay a solid plank floor and give it a pitch toward one corner with an outlet for drainage. Build double doors, reaching from the outer to the inner wall and packed solidly with nonconducting material. Or have a separate door in each wall, but the former is the better method.

To Fill an Ice House. - First cover the floor with sawdust, tan bark, or other suitable material at least 2 feet in thickness. Lay on this successive layers of ice in a solid mass, but leave a space of 12 inches all around. Cover the ice and fill the pitch of the building to a thickness of several feet with nonconducting material, but leave an air space between the top of this material and the roof. As the ice is Homemade Tackle. removed from day to day for use, carefully replace the covering.

To Protect an Ice House. - Build a cheap trellis of slats or rough poles 8 or 10 inches from the walls all around, and also extending over the roof, and train the common woodbine or English ivy, or even clematis, morning glory, or other similar trailing vine to run over it. This can readily be done in most localities and forms a cheap and effective shade, that is a perfect defense against the direct rays of the sun. The trellis will prevent the plants from causing the boards of the ice house to decay, and by leaving a space between for circulation of air, will greatly assist in lowering the temperature. A mantle of vines also covers the bare ugliness of the cheap boarding of an ice house and tends to make it an object of beauty.

Or a skeleton ice house may be built by driving posts in the ground to make a frame and boarding them up to any desired height. Sawdust may be laid directly on the ground, but to prevent washouts and provide drainage it is better to throw in a few large stones, level them roughly, and lay a loose board floor a foot or more from HEATING, LIGHTING, AND REFRIGERATION the ground. Cover this with a layer of coarse hay or straw to prevent the sawdust from falling through, and on this put a foot or more of sawdust.

Lay the ice in the middle in a solid mass, but leave a space of 2 feet all around between the ice and the boards and pack this space and cover the ice with nonconducting material, and lay a roof of loose boards over all, with an air space between. Such an ice house can be thrown up and boarded in a day while the ice is being drawn, and the planks can be taken down and stored away, if desired, as rapidly as the ice is removed in summer.

Or ice may be stored in a pen made of rails built up corncob fashion as the ice is put in. A floor of rails should be laid a foot or so from the ground and covered with straw, on which sawdust should be packed a foot or more deep. Lay the ice in a solid mass, pack with sawdust all around, cover the top with 2 feet of sawdust, and thatch with coarse straw.

Over this lay a shed roof of boards tacked down with a few nails.

If morning glories or other quickgrowing vines can be trained to run over the rails, it will greatly assist in preserving the ice in summer.

Or a load of sawdust may be thrown on the ground, a pile of ice built up on this, and a rough board frame merely tacked together at the corners about 2 feet distant all around from the pile. This space must, of course, be filled with sawdust, the top covered over to an equal depth, and rough boards or canvas thrown over all.

To Make an Ice Chest.-A practical ice chest may be made by building a tight box of matched boards with double sides 6 inches apart, having an inner chamber 3 feet long, 2 feet deep, and 2 feet wide. This will hold a block of 100 pounds or more of ice, and leave room all around for milk, butter, fresh meat, and other articles.

This ice box must be furnished with a double lid packed with charcoal or sawdust and fitting tightly so as to exclude the outer air. It will preserve ice practically as well as an expensive refrigerator. The inner compartment must be furnished with a small pipe to carry off the water from the melting ice.

Or a cheap ice box may be made by simply setting one dry-goods box inside of another. There must be a space of 6 inches all around between the two. Pack this space closely with powdered charcoal or sawdust, and make a double lid, packed in the same manner, to fit the larger box. Provide a drainage pipe to remove the melting ice.

Or place a small cask or half barrel inside of a large cask and fill the space all around with charcoal. A tube from the bottom of the lower cask will carry off the melted ice.

Furnish the inner cask with a removable lid and the outer cask with double cover packed with charcoal.

Also provide a charcoal bag a foot thick or more to lay over the top of the inner cask. By filling the inner cask two thirds full of powdered ice, or with snow in winter, ices may be frozen in it, or by putting in a cake of ice it may be used as an ordinary refrigerator.