148 POPULAR FRUIT GROWING. 



to answer the purpose. The chief requirements are to arrange 

 for thorough insulation against outside changes of temperature. 

 This can be most satisfactorily arranged by the use of dead 

 air spaces and building paper. There should be at least two 

 well constructed dead air spaces about the storage room. These 

 dead air spaces should be made in the floor and roof as well as 

 in the walls. The windows, if such are found necessary, should 

 consist of at least three sash set closely together so as to make 

 two tight dead air spaces between. 



It will be found that rooms above ground, surrounded by 

 well made dead air spaces, are more satisfactory for cooling 

 fruit than cellars even if the latter are provided with proper 

 insulation. The cost of properly fitting up a cellar as a cool- 

 ing room is nearly or quite as expensive as the fitting up of a 

 similar space above ground and the wood and other materials 

 used in its construction are short lived. The stone, cement or 

 brick walls used ordinarily in cellars are good conductors of 

 heat and among the poorest of materials for the walls of a 

 storage room. 



A fruit grower provided with a well insulated fruit room 

 will often find it to his advantage to lower its temperature by 

 the use of ice early in the season. Figs. 72 and 73 show a good 

 method of constructing a fruit storage house large enough to 

 hold a few carloads of apples, with provision for the use of ice 

 for reducing the temperature. The building is designed to be 

 located on a hillside of such a slope that the first floor will be 

 on the level of the surface at one end and the second floor a 

 few feet above the surface at the other. The building is 18 by 38 

 feet, interior measurement, two stories in height and divided 

 into four rooms, two on each floor. On the second floor is the 

 ice-storage room, 18 by 21 feet, in which the future supply of ice 

 is stored, and the ice chamber, 15 by 16 feet, in which is held 

 the ice that cools the refrigerating room directly below. A 

 door in the ice chamber communicates with the outside. This 

 is for the unloading of ice and is the only outside entrance into 

 the second story. The refrigerating room is 16 by 18 feet, and 

 is the compartment in which the temperature is to be reduced, 

 and in which perishable products are to be stored. Leading 



