Passive refrigerator (icebox)

[k15n1]

This buy found a way to take advantage of cold winters to freeze a huge block of ice in a custom-made icebox. This is actually free energy! And he doesn't even have to haul blocks of ice around.

http://fourmileisland.com/IceBox.htm

 

[gettinaclue]

Interesting! Thanks!

 

[miss_thenorth]

When we had our cottage up north, we didn't hav electricity. We made due with propane lighting, and stove, and deep cell batteries for wehen we needed electricity (actually, we didn't need it, but it came in handy sometimes) Granted, we had a house in town where we recharged the batteries etc. One other thing we used to do was freeze totesfull of water for our "ice box" What we used was an old non-working freezer. We would put the ice block in the bottom of the freezer and cover it with a board. We put the meat, milk and stuff you wanted real cold on top of the board,a nd then had baskets full of our other stuff. One basket for produce, one for condiments etc. Worked for us. One block would last us a week in the hottest of summer. Weh the kids were off school (or before they were in school) we would spend the whole summer up there. Hubby would go into town to work, so he would bring the batteries, totes, and propane tank if needed with him to replace/refill/recharge.

Our cottage was on a river and back in the day they woulod build icehouses along the river shore and cut out huge blocks of ice, and store them in the ice house. Once they had enough ice, enough to last them all summer, they would pack in the sides and tops of the icehouses with straw etc to isulate them. If they did it correctly,and estimated their needs correctly, the ice would last them the whole summer until the cold came again. Tehn once the river froze again, they would start all over. We had contemplated doing this, but then hubby got offered ajob down here , so we moved. We were contemplating building a year round home there completely off grid.

 

[Marianne]

I had been to that site a long time ago and completely forgot about it. Thanks for posting! It's pretty interesting.