Good evening friends,
Just wanted to thank everyone for the very warm welcome.There was a comment about my grandparents,and yes they taught me well.Just gonna put one thing out there as its one of my many seasonal projects that I do every year.I keep an ice house both winter and summer.I can remember as a young child in at my grampas home place being sent to the ice house in the middle of august to get a meat product out to thaw for that nights meal.In my ice house right now I still have blocks of ice that I put in there last march.All we do for this is go and cut blocks of ice in the winter,stack them in there and on each level I put about 6 inches of sawdust.I kid you not I dont own a deep freeze,thats how I keep all my frozen product year round the old fashion way Sawdust and blocks of ice.Most of the stuff I do come fromjust normal ways of of living.You now the way people survived backed then,right from smoking my meat both domestic beef and pork,to wild game.Another thing I can remember them doing back then was taking a wooden barrel and in the summer time they would take it and bury it at the edge of a bog or in the peat moss,then salted the meat and such,they even used to salt apples and pears .Now I now in this day and age alot of people wpould say how un-healthy all that salt is,well I can pronounce salt...just sayin.and we are talking about survival.Anyhow I hope everyone has a great week.feel free to contact me .
Kindest Regards
Michael aka Tiggeratplay
Be wise,Be Humble and be safe
I want to make an ice house but was thinking about freezing 5 gallon buckets and placing them in the house every year, rather than cutting ice. Does this sound viable to someone who is actively using and ice house. Is yours above ground or below?
I would make it mostly below ground (2/3) with a well insulated roof due to the warm summers we are getting and a way to let the cold winter air in. A reflective roof would be good for this as well. Freezing water in 5 gal. buckets is definitly easier then cutting and hauling ice if you don't have a good source nearby, or don't want to be out freezing your person as well. Build the ice house in the summer, wait for winter and start letting mother nature do the freezing for you. Dip the buckets in a tub of water to release the ice. They will be brittle and crack easily, so maybe consider some of the large rubber tire feed pans that are indestructable. Cost more but have many uses and never have to be replaced.
Good call OddDuck. I was thinking a touch of veggie oil wiped on the inside of buckets too. Slowly add water to a bucket since the top freezes first and usually busts the ass out from under the bucket. As far as letting the cold do the work for me, I was thinking a removable roof or at least one on a prop rod of some kind.
If the ice house is not overly large, then a hinged roof would work well. Plant a tall post on the hinged side if a tree isn't handy and rig a pulley system to lift the lid effortlessly. A ladder/step system could then be built inside for access. Consider a 2 cell ice house; one section whose lid does not get opened during the summer to be used as a small freezer. Lifting the whole roof during the summer might not be feasible but building a smaller trap door into it could be an option. Remember to locate the ice house in the shade but out of winter's prevailing winds. Snow drifts will make your life more miserable then it needs to be. Now is the time to be scouting a good location keeping spring runoff in mind as well.