Ice Box anyone?

[Sarabeth]

Does anyone here use and old fashioned ice box on a daily basis? The kind you put a block of ice in? Any ideas?

Sarah

[uncle Will in In.]

A couple questions <> Do you have electricity? Do you have a freezer? If both answers was yes, you can freeze jugs of water in your freezer, then put them in your icebox until they are about thawed. If you have to buy the ice to opperate your icebox, it would be pretty costly. Most of these boxes are someones presious antique.

[houndlover]

Old ice boxes are inefficient. If you have to use ice, get one of the new camping ice chests. They will hold a block of ice for several days. We've had to use them for extended "dry camping" times, in hot weather, and they work great.

[ldc]

A few HT'ers use Uncle Will's system, posted above, using frozen water jugs from the freezer to cool a refridge. of some sort. I had a neighbor here that did this too. ldc

[DW]

One winter we did not have a frig. but had a freezer. We used a large cooler and managed all winter. We used the frozen milk jugs. A good friend came to visit over xmas and her first question was...where am I going to keep my beer? We laughed and said on the front porch!

[Hoop]

My father remembers using an icebox on a daily basis.

Prior to the 1930's, (and electricity) most rural people in northern climates did the same thing.

They would "harvest" ice from the frozen lakes and transport the big chunks of ice to an "ice house". In the ice house, sawdust was sprinkled on all the ice....so as to maintain it. The sawdust worked great. My father told me the ice in their icehouse would last until late September or early October before melting.

Each day, one would go to the ice house and chip off the requisite amount of ice to be used in the ice box.

Of course, todays high tech coolers work far better than the old iceboxes. But people got by quite nicely with the iceboxes.

[cathleenc]

we bought an old icebox quite cheaply - intend to use it as 'temporary' refrigeration when a friend/family comes to visit/spend a day or two in the former swine barn that was turned into a finished building by the previous owners.

[Charleen]

Woodsrunner and Pelenaka do. At least, I know they did, I'm not sure if they still do.

[hunter63]

We picked up a very nice oak icebox with the brass fittings.
Looks really good in the cabin, but.........

My intention was to install cooling coils and use it as a refrig.
After checking out the lack of insulation, I decided to just use it as is.
The milk jug method works well if you have a "normal" freezer, but the whole process take a lot of time, and effort.

A lot of the old ways are romantic, but not really practial for extended use.
I'm sure that your grand parents, great grand parents, up graded as soon as they could/could afford to.
Seems to me, after talking to my grand parents, that the "good old days" were good when they were over.

That being said, it's good to know to how to make use of the old ways, "just in case", and like anything else, practice is the best way to learn.

I'm 60 years old and we had an icebox in the house for several years in the early 1960's..we were very poor..couldn't afford a refrigerator..anyway, one of my Saturday chores was to remove the drip tray from the bottom of the icebox and try to dump it out without spilling any water..LOL..right..the floor always got mopped on Saturdays too..

The ice man delivered a huge block of ice once a week..and we had no problems with keeping things cool..not "cold"..in Winter, we'd be able to freeze things by putting them in a small box which we kept on the fire escape..

[Pelenaka]

We used a restored & slightly upgraded 1930's ice box for over 2 years until my husband decided that having ice cubes that didn't involve an ice pick or ice scrapper was more important.
Here's a link to pics & a post describing daily living using an ice box. Generating ice is covered in my blog post. Let me know if you have any questions after reading my post.
http://thirtyfivebyninety.blogspot.c...rn-millie.html

Future plans are to construct a built in ice box with an recycled insulation, old fridge racks & found wood in the cellar. Thinking of 6" thick walls.
This will be used for Summer garden produce until it can be canned or prepped for the freezer.

Here's the link to my husbands blog about installing his modern new fangled refridgerator.
http://woodsrunnerstrail.blogspot.co...y-whiskey.html

[Sarabeth]

Pelenaka,
Thanks for the link to your blog. I so enjoyed reading your and your husband's ideas on the icebox!!! Thanks again for the info...
Sarah

[Simpler Times]

I've always been intrigued with the old ice houses, the kind where they cut the chunks of ice from a frozen water body and stored them into the summer in a specially built ice house. This thread has me thinking about our cool, unfinished basement. I wonder how long jugs of ice (frozen outside during the winter) would last in a basement of that type if they were covered with insulative material. I'm sure it would depend on the number of jugs, their proximity to one another, the type and thickness of insulation, and the ambient temperature. Has anyone ever tried this? I would be interested in the specifics if so.

[Pelenaka]

Sarah your very welcome.

S.T. that is an interesting concept if I understand you correctly. Building an ice house indoors? A box within a box?
Can you start a new thread on this?

[cowboy joe]

Some of the ice boxes used the Crosley Icy ball rather than ice. Interesting concept:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icyball