The Canadian Horticulturist. 



43 



HOW TO BUILD A SERVICEABLE ICEHOUSE AT 

 MODERATE COST. 



N icehouse need not be a costly structure, but if it is to be an 

 attractive addition to the farm or in keeping with other attractive 

 buildings it cannot be built at a small cost. I shall charge the 

 cost against the efficiency as a preserver of ice. The require- 

 ments of an icehouse are that it will hold sawdust around the 

 ice to keep the rain off and drain water. The materials used in 

 its construction may be of the cheapest and rudest character and yet keep the 

 ice as well as if it cost $150 or $200. A neighbor has an icehouse erected at a 

 a very small cost, and yet his ice is preserved perfectly. The sides are of poles 

 laid up into a pen twelve feet wide, eighteen feet long and ten feet high, the 

 poles being notched slightly where they cross, to prevent rubbing and to lessen 

 the cracks between them. The gables are left open to give ventilation. A 

 floor is made and proper drainage acquired by laying rails together a foot thick. 

 The roof projecting three feet at each end, is of clapboards nailed to cross 

 pieces resting upon pole rafters. All the material except the nails and the 

 material for the door were worked out of the farm timber. 



In filling this house the blocks are laid within eighteen inches of the holes 

 and the spaces between them filled with sawdust as the ice is built up. Where 

 .♦"'H/'W^ timber is not so plentiful a serviceable 



structure can be built at a cost but little 

 greater than the cost of this one. Refuse 

 boards or slabs can be used for the sides, 

 nailing them up or down and putting on 

 a board roof. The house should be built 

 on high ground that surface water may 

 not enter. It is well to cut a shallow 

 ditch around the building. In filling cut 

 the blocks as large as possible and pack 

 closely. All crevices should be filled. In 

 the spring watch for holes and close them as soon as found. Even in March the 

 air will often be warm enough to make holes and if the air is allowed to circu- 

 late through holes it melts ice rapidly. When a stream is fed by a spring or 

 brook, clear pure ice can be procured. A pond, unless it is quite large and 

 stock have been kept from it for some time, will not yield ice fit to be used. 

 No amount of freezmg will make purely wholesome ice out of foul water. It is 

 quite as essential that water for the ice supply should be as pure as for the 

 ordinary family water supply. — R. H. McCready, in Farm and Home. 





Fig. 904. — Chkap Icbhocse. 



A Kansas Populist is at work on a new scheme to increase the sum of 

 human happiness. He is trying to cross the milkweed and the strawberry, so 

 h at people may raise strawberries and cream together. — New York Tribune. 



