PACKING AND MARKETING FRUITS 37 



proved uniformly successful in the northern states 

 where they have been well built and intelligently 

 managed. In the southern states they are less satis- 

 factory, and in any case they are unreliable when 

 mismanaged. 



The two important things to be looked after in 

 building these houses for common storage are (1) 

 insulation, and (2) ventilation. 



Insulation is provided as described above by mak- 

 ing very tight walls with dead air spaces. Formerly 

 it was recommended to fill the spaces with sawdust 

 or some similar material. This is now known to be 

 inadvisable. 



Ventilation should be secured by having a reason- 

 able number of windows which may be easily opened 

 ana shut. These should be near the floor or else 

 special ventilators should be provided at the floor 

 level, opening in all sides of the building. An ade- 

 quate discharge for warm air must also be provided 

 for from the upper part of the storage room. This is 

 usually secured by ventilating shafts running from 

 the storage room to the roof. A circulation of air 

 can be secured at critical times with this construc- 

 tion by lighting a lamp and placing it on a small 

 shelf in the ventilating shaft. The windows of such 

 storage houses are opened at night when the tem- 

 perature is low and are closed early in the morning 

 before the thermometer goes up. In this way a 

 storage house can be thoroughly cooled off and can 

 be held at a very uniform temperature when once it 

 is cooled . Of course the cooling is not so positive as 

 with artificial refrigeration, nor can it be so quickly 

 accomplished. 



The construction of cold storage houses with arti- 

 ficial refrigeration is rather a complicated matter, 

 which even the refrigeration engineers do not under- 

 stand any too well. It would be going too far to take 



