Ice House

Homesteading & Country Living Forum

Help Support Homesteading & Country Living Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.

randyt

Awesome Friend
Neighbor
HCL Supporter
Joined
Sep 22, 2020
Messages
894
Anyone use or have plans to use a icehouse? If so do you plan on cutting or making your ice. I was reading about Sylvan Hart. Sylvan would fill old milk cartons up with water in the winter and let the freeze. He would give or sell these to the rafters in the summer. He must have had a ice house but I have not seen a reference to it.
 
I wish I had better memories of this, but the family had an ice house that we used. However, we got electricity when I was young, about 3 or 4 years old and a chest freezer soon followed. It was built on the side of the mountain and had a spring. So it must have been a combo spring house/ice house if memory is correct. I recall my dad cutting ice from the pond and putting it in the ice house. The building was stone at the base and was finished off at the top with wood. It was probably first built in the early 1800. The stream must have contributed to the demise of the building as it collapsed a few year later after we stopped using it. This was in the Virginia mountains and not Alaska.
 
I can definitely see an ice house as practical where the winter temperatures allow for making lots of ice. In my area of Tennessee, we just don't get that much cold weather. There are plenty of nights below freezing over the winter but only a handful ever get below 20 degrees. And daytime temps are seldom below freezing for more than a few scattered days. So the average nighttime temperatures dipping into the mid to upper 20's just don't make for significant ice making.

When I lived in Pennsylvania, I actually owned a building that was once an ice house. The walls were 2 to 3 feet thick with an abundance of what seemed like an older version of styrofoam. They tell me they would pack that with chunks of ice that were a cubic foot or more and surround each chunk with layers of sawdust. I never knew the actual process of collecting those blocks of ice.
 
They tell me they would pack that with chunks of ice that were a cubic foot or more and surround each chunk with layers of sawdust. I never knew the actual process of collecting those blocks of ice.
About every antique store and farm auction in our area will have ice saws and ice tongs for sale. We have an ice saw in the basement. I need to make a wood handle for it.

Below is what a vintage ice saw looks like. There are more modern varieties available nowadays. Some modern ice harvesters use chainsaws.
1609177342191.png


 
My grandparents had an icehouse still standing when I was small. It was a clay block building, as I recall it looked something like a large outhouse. I don't ever remember going inside it. The actual old outhouse standing a few feet from it was much more interesting to a 5 year old. Neither had been used since the early 1940s when they got electricity.

The old place is a farm field now. It's all gone but for the grain bins.
Sigh...
 
About every antique store and farm auction in our area will have ice saws and ice tongs for sale. We have an ice saw in the basement. I need to make a wood handle for it.

Below is what a vintage ice saw looks like. There are more modern varieties available nowadays. Some modern ice harvesters use chainsaws.
View attachment 55813



Cool video! ;) Thanks for sharing.

Wow, that's an incredible amount of work for the ice they end up with. While it's quite interesting, I'm gettin' old enough that I think to myself... Hmmm... maybe 3 solar panels... LOL!!
 
Wow, that's an incredible amount of work for the ice they end up with. While it's quite interesting, I'm gettin' old enough that I think to myself... Hmmm... maybe 3 solar panels... LOL!!
Not much ice here :(.
When a scurry-caine knocks out power down here, we get ice from a gas station.
The rest of the time, it's God-bless Freon
bow.gif
to keep the beer cold
Toast.gif
.
 
We don't get temps cold enough to make this practical. Maybe higher up in the mountains it would work for 3-4 months a year. If you had a good size pond it might freeze deep enough to cut blocks from. Around our house the neighbors pond will freeze over, but I've never saw it thick enough to walk on.
 
When a scurry-caine knocks out power down here, we get ice from a gas station.

Yup. I remember. Lived in Slidell at the time Katrina rolled through. Gas stations weren't even open for a while after that one. Can't say I miss those hurricanes.

We can get a tornado rambling through this part of TN once in a while, up here on the TN Cumberland Plateau, but it's pretty rare for it to be a big one. Otherwise, not a lot of threats here, at least so far.
 
If you had a good size pond it might freeze deep enough to cut blocks from.

We actually did have a layer of ice on our pond a few days ago. It was probably 1/2 inch thick. It's gone today. I don't think it's ever gotten a whole lot thicker than that here. Tomorrow's highs in the 50's. Good for heating, not much good for makin' ice. ;)
 
I've seen ice saws that run with a engine, kinda looked like a upside down buzz rig
Yep, that's the "modern" way of making ice blocks. Every winter in St. Paul they make a giant castle out of ice blocks. I am sure they use a machine to cut the ice.
1609253608723.png


Since resturants and bars have been shut down in Minnesota since early December (except for outdoor dining), some of the bars have built "ice bars" to serve their outdoor customers.
 
We don't harvest ice in Texas but when I was a kid there were ice houses where you could buy it. I remember people buying big blocks of it in the summer for parties. They'd set it in a washtub in the shade with an icepick so you could chip off what you needed to put in your glass and keep your tea or lemonade cold. They must have put a tarp or something over it to hold the cold in but I don't remember. A big bunch of it would go in the ice cream maker. They'd fold up an old quilt and put on top of it for us little kids to sit on while the grown ups churned it. I don't know why. I was a kid and didn't ask questions - just waited for my bowl of ice cream. Now I'm wondering where the ice came from. ??
 
We don't harvest ice in Texas but when I was a kid there were ice houses where you could buy it. I remember people buying big blocks of it in the summer for parties. They'd set it in a washtub in the shade with an icepick so you could chip off what you needed to put in your glass and keep your tea or lemonade cold. They must have put a tarp or something over it to hold the cold in but I don't remember. A big bunch of it would go in the ice cream maker. They'd fold up an old quilt and put on top of it for us little kids to sit on while the grown ups churned it. I don't know why. I was a kid and didn't ask questions - just waited for my bowl of ice cream. Now I'm wondering where the ice came from. ??
I always thought that a Texas ice house was one of those metal pole building that have roll up garage doors on all sides. When the garage doors are rolled up, you can go in and order a beer.
 
Since the Egyptians made ice in the African desert I am pretty sure you could make Ice in Texas where the humidity is low.
Using evaporative cooling you can produce ice. The higher the humidity the more difficult it becomes.
 
there used to be a web site, with a modern approach to the icehouse, they basicly used a well insulated box with copper coils inside the box, which I believe was in a basement room on the north side, the coil was connected to another coil outside at a higher level, the coils were filled with non toxic antifreeze, thermo siphon caused the antifreeze to transfer heat from the water to the upper coil and caused the water to form an Ice block, much less labor involved,
 
old icehouse in europe use to be underground..basically a silo type root cellar. i seen a video of an old one it had a hole in top to drop the ice in it during winter time. it was close t pond so ice could be cut. heres one similar design. the aristocrats had ice for drinks in summer .

Rfb6ec4bdbd543a77d113be114cc57ad8
 
R5219ce794badd4076d0e618d6584f56c
 
Rbd695dfaa68467475df893d3afc72607
 
Re41d23cfabaf8b3382bf5c6ce3dc182a
 
Back
Top