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Heating, Lighting, and Refrigeration: House

To Make an Ice House. - The size 01 an ice house must, of course, be determined by the number of persons that are to make use of it. The interior should be so proportioned as to admit of packing cakes of any preferred size, as 2 by 3 feet, in a solid mass, but with an air space between the outsile of the cakes and the wall of the ice house to admit of drainage.

Hence an ice house 14 by 20 feet inside dimensions will admit of a layer of twenty-four cakes with a space of 1 foot clear all around.

Such an ice house carried up eight or ten layers would last two or three ordinary families for a year. It costs but little more to build a good-sized ice house, and often two or three neighbors can club together to advantage, both to reduce the cost of building the house, and also the labor of filling it.

Or, if more ice is harvested than one family requires, it can frequently be sold to neighbors at a profit sufficient to admit of paying for the first cost and for the labor of harvesting the ice each year.