Uhe RURAL NEW-YORKER 
1427 
Farm Mechanics 
Making Over An Icehouse 
I have an icehouse alongside the house 
I cool my milk in. The icehouse is a little 
smaller than it should be. I« it practical, 
and will it pay, to put a concrete bot¬ 
tom in it, and run the water from the 
melted ice into the milk box? I would 
have to fill the bottom of the icehouse 
up 15 inches. I wondered if there would 
be considerable trouble keeping the pipe 
open. The diagram shows tlie plan sug¬ 
gested. J. s L. 
Sussex, N. ,7. 
The advantages of such a system are 
more apparent than real, while the ex¬ 
pense connected with its installation is 
considerable. t)ne would be in a way to 
get better satisfaction from his work and 
money invested if the same sum were 
titilized in enlarging and improving the 
storage-house at hand. At first thought 
it would seem like a considerable saving 
to catch this water as it drains from the 
melting ice, but a little careful study of 
the matter leads to some serious defects 
in the theory. If yotir icehouse is of 
reasonably good construction and the ice 
carefully packed, with an insulating blan¬ 
ket of dry .shavings or sawdust at least 
OIK' foot thick surrounding the ice pile, 
it is probable that it does not waste , by 
melting to exceed one-fifth, or 20 per cent, 
as ob.servations have been made on rough¬ 
ly constructed pole shelters where the 
shrinkage for the season was estimated 
to be from .‘10 to 50 per cent. 
The actual space occupied by a ton of- 
solid ice is about .^5 cubic feet. It is 
customary, though, in figuring the capac¬ 
ity of icehouses, to allow about 40 cubic 
feet per ton in the large houses, while in 
th»‘ small ones from .50 to 55 cubic feet 
are allowed for the same amount. This 
allows for the sawdust packing which 
covers the ice pile, which, being of the 
same thickness in the small house that it 
is in the large, occupies a correspond¬ 
ingly greater proportion of the total 
si)ace, making the estimate of 50 to 55 
cubic feet nece.ssary in this case. If the 
house has insulated walls, so that no 
packing is used in dii-ect contact with the 
ice. the unit of 40 cubic feet per ton may 
be used for both large and small houses. 
Taking these figures as a basis, and 
assuming your icehouse to have 10-foot 
posts, we have a stoi-age space of 10xl2i 
11. or 1,.'120 cubic feet, room for about 
20.5 tons of ice. Allowing a loss by 
melting of 20 per cent would mean a loss 
of 10,000 pounds of ice as water during 
the season. Probably the greater part of 
this waste would take pl.ace during the 
months of May to September, inclusive, a 
l)eriod of about 150 days, and would give 
you in the cooling tank less than 75 
pounds of water per day—about three 
pailfuls. Of course this waste would be 
greater than this during the hottest ])art 
of the .Summer, and correspondingly le.ss 
at the beginning and clo.se of the season. 
It. It. Graham of Ontario Agricultural 
College, allows a much higher percentage 
of melting than above, assuming nearly a 
barrel of waste water per day from an ice 
pile the size of yours, but even with this 
amount does not consider it advisable to 
go to the expense of a construction that 
will utilize it. 
The desire to utilize drainage water for 
cooling is, I think, based on a misconcep¬ 
tion due to not thoroughly understanding 
the difference in the cooling powers of ice 
and water. Ice does not cool a body by 
reason of itself being cold, but cools it by 
its power to absorb heat while melting. 
It soaks it up like a sponge. The water 
recovered by this method might be as low 
as 32 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature 
of melting ice itself, but, pound for 
pound, its cooling i)ower would be much 
less. The ice will absorb groat quantities 
of heat while melting and changing to 
water at 32 degrees Fahrenheit, while in 
the case of the water it wilt begin to rise 
in temperature immediately it is brought 
in contact with a warmer body. It fol¬ 
lows, then, that the beet plan is to keep, 
by careful packing and insulation, as 
much of the ice pile as pos.sible in a .solid 
condition, and do the cooling with this 
great heat-absorbing medium. 
As to the cost of remodeling to utilize 
the drainage water, the icehouse should 
be arranged with stuffed and water¬ 
proofed walls, the stuffing of planer shav- 
i;igs to luep tlie lu'.-it our and the water- 
k 
proofing of good building paper to keep 
the shavings used ae packing from becom¬ 
ing wet, an’d thus having their heat insu¬ 
lation qualities le.ssened. The floor would 
require a fill of approximately one foot 
of clean cinders, broken stone or gravel, 
upon which should be laid a four-inch 
concrete floor of a 1:2:4 mixture. This 
will require approximately two barrels of 
cement. The floor would also need an in¬ 
sulating blanket of cork or some similar 
material to prevent the entrance of heat 
from the ground through the concrete, a 
substance that offers a comparatively lit- 
the resistance to the flow of heat. 
ROBERT n. SMITH. 
Cost of Tractor Plowing 
I have a kerosene tractor, and would 
like to know how much money I ought 
to have to plow per acre. It burns about 
18 gallons of kerosene at 1.3 cents a gal¬ 
lon and a gallon and a half of oil at 80 
cents a gallon. The tractor and plows 
cost me ,$1,170. w. n. t. 
New York. 
My figures as to the cost are based, in 
ca.se of hiring teams, on the price paid 
this year in this part, which is about the 
average for the State, or in fact any place 
where teams are to be hired for farm 
work. The railroads and public works 
are paying SOc an hour. At 70c. with 
hay at $2.5 and oats at .$1, the prices all 
this Summer, and wages for hired men 
.$.3..50 to $4, the man who worked for 70c 
an hour and stood for the lost time did 
not get rich. 
In case of doing the work with your own 
teams and hired man, the best authority, 
taken from the most careful observation, 
is froin the investigation's of the State of 
Illinois. It mu.st be remembered that 
feed is lower in price than in the East, 
and there they calculate that for every 
hour a horse works he costs 18c, which 
covers idle time, and all other mainten¬ 
ance. The best operators in the "West, 
who have counted the cost of the hired 
man, say it makes no difference whether 
he is hired by the day, month or year; 
he costs $.3.48 for every 10 hours he 
works. The only advantage of hiring by 
the month or year is that you have the 
help all the time—maybe. 
I hope that I have been able to give 
you some assistance in solving this ques¬ 
tion. I may be wrong in my way of 
looking at the question, but this is the 
way I see it and I have not found anyone 
who can show me where I am wrong up 
to the present time. 
New .Ter.sey. eawrence f. Bedford. 
Construction of Cistern 
I nm preparing to build a cistern. I 
keep from 10 to 15 head of cow.s and 
.young cattle; will want water for drink¬ 
ing and culinary purposes. Will it be 
necessary to have top of cistern even with 
surface of the ground, or can it be built 
partly above the ground? Some people 
tell me that soft brick is the best material 
to use, but they will cost from $25 to .$.30 
per l.OOO here; consequently I could not 
afford to u.se them. r. r. h. 
Kitzmiller, Md. 
Concrete is rapidly taking the place of 
brick and stone for underground cisterns 
and would probably serve your purpose 
better and at le.ss cost than brick, particu¬ 
larly if you have sand and gravel or 
crushed stone available. The construc¬ 
tion of concrete underground cisterns may 
readily be undertaken by anyone familiar 
with concrete work, and specifications can 
ea.sily be obtained from any of the numer¬ 
ous cement manufacturers. Your local 
dealer in cement, if he does not have these 
•pecifications at hand, can quickly obtain 
them for you. Some knowledge of con¬ 
crete construction is needed if concrete 
walls are to be made watertight, and it is 
not wise for an amateur builder to at¬ 
tempt this without definite knowledge, 
such as the cement manufacturers gladly 
furnish. m. b. d. 
Greenhouse Putty 
Will you give a formula for making a 
greenhouse putty that does not harden 
with exposure? G. t. w. 
Auburn, Me. 
I know of no formula for making putty 
that will not harden with exposure. 3’he 
putty of commerce is made of whiting 
ground in linseed oil, and as soon as the 
volatile part of the oil evaporates it 
leaves the putty hard. Petroleum in one 
form and another has been tried with 
varying success, but after a time the oil 
will evai)orate and leave this putty hard 
and .so firmly adhesive to both wood and 
glass it is almost impossible to remove it. 
Mastica is one of these petroleum-whit¬ 
ing products, and the manufacturers claim 
it will remain flexible. It is true it will 
remain flexible for a much longer period 
than putty made with linseed oil, but it 
hardens good and hard after a few 
months, as will any putty made from 
whiting and oil that is at all volatile. 
K. 
Teacher— “Willie, did vou ever see a 
zebra?” Willie: “Yes. ma’am.” “What 
did it look like?” “It looked just like a 
camonflaged horse,’’-^Yonkers Statesman. 
-v 
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