s/o of refrigeration thread... springhouses

[Ezekiel's Garde]

So, what is needed for a spring house? We have a creek, but don't know if it is spring-fed or not. It's dry part of the year. We have a large family, no hopes of solar for right now, and if the economy crashes any time soon, we won't get it. We're looking at about 5 years to get out of debt completely before we can really invest much more into off-grid infrastructure on our property. By then, "the crash" may have already occurred. However, due to our beliefs, we feel it is more important to pay our debts first. Anyway, a springhouse is probably doable, if we have what we need here on the property, we just need to know what that is.

Thanks!!!

[Cliff]

Pretty sure a spring house needs to be built over the place where the spring actually comes out of the ground. Don't think water just running thru a creek would be cool enough.
Also, when creeks run dry here is usually the hottest time of the year. That would be when you needed the spring house the most.
Do you have any areas on your farm where the ground stays moist all the time? If you do you could dig down to see if you find a spring that might run after being uncovered.

[Ezekiel's Garde]

Cliff - the whole property is moist, lol... We're in a 100 year flood plain except where the house, garden, and animal shelters are. Even up on the hill, if you dig down 18 inches, water starts coming up from the ground and filling the hole. The other thing I was wondering was something with our well. The water is always cold from 80 feet down, and we're going to be buying a hand pump from Lehman's about as soon as we can afford (probably tax return, if the government gives us our money back), so we could change the water out quite frequently if need be (give active little boys something constructive to do, lol). I don't know if the electric grid would go down, but you never know.

[geo in mi]

Google is your best friend.... http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/programs/ext.../ag473-15.html

Hope this will help

[agmantoo]

Ezekiel's Garde
Have you considered finding a year around shaded area on the north side of a building and digging as deep as possible hole? I know of an abandoned old home that used such a method to store milk and butter. The hole was stone lined/dirt floor and had an insulated (sawdust) hinged lid . It apparently worked as there was evidence it had been used for years judging on the wear around the lift handle (wooden). The hole was approximately 6 feet deep and the items were hung in place in order to get them near the bottom.
An aside, we use a butter bell to store butter and it works great all year. The house is considerably warmer than the 6 ft hole would be IMO.

[Forerunner]

A creek running through, you say.......

Look for a north facing slope on the south side of the creek, in one of the waterway tributaries that might flow into the creek from the south.
If you have such a thing, that may be the place to sink a root cellar made of poured concrete with the floor set up to make use of the water seep/flow.
The north facing door will ensure cooler temps in the warm season.

Obviously, there are many other considerations, but the above would be my first.
My second concern would be flooding. Does the creek ever flood ?
Are there depressions on the south side of the creek that lay high enough to avoid flooding ?

[Freya]

Subbing ofcourse.

[Forerunner]

Subbing ???

[Freya]

Subscribing or bookmarking the thread so it shows up in my subscribed threads list.


I want to be able to find it faster later on.

[Forerunner]

Aha..... learn something new every day.

[Ezekiel's Garde]

Originally Posted by Forerunner

A creek running through, you say.......

Look for a north facing slope on the south side of the creek, in one of the waterway tributaries that might flow into the creek from the south.
If you have such a thing, that may be the place to sink a root cellar made of poured concrete with the floor set up to make use of the water seep/flow.
The north facing door will ensure cooler temps in the warm season.

Unfortunately, the south side is too close to the property line... However, there is a spot with an east and west bank that are both shaded well all year round, and we have a decent amount of property close to this, so property lines aren't such an issue. At this point, the creek may get high but has never flooded up past the top of the bank.

Obviously, there are many other considerations, but the above would be my first.
My second concern would be flooding. Does the creek ever flood ?
Are there depressions on the south side of the creek that lay high enough to avoid flooding ?

The creek floods every year during the rainy season. Down where it curves toward the east, it can easily flood all the way up to the top of what used to be a grape arbor, which equals roughly half to 3/4 an acre worth. This land is almost all pasture land, since I can't plant any crops on it. Up north, where it is running north/south, it doesn't get out of its banks very much. In fact, there is a decrepit old animal building with concrete all around it, and it looks to have never been flooded ever. In this area, we could do a combo of what you're talking about and what agmantoo is, as it is the shady area which I was previously describing. I was thinking that something that worked like a gigantic butter bell might work (thought this was the idea behind springhouses, actually).

We only have about 1.87 acres, so we're not talking a lot of land here. The creek is probably fully half of our property line, though. Our property looks like the state of Nevada from an aerial view. The north boundary and the east boundary are not bounded by the creek.

Thanks, guys!

[solidwoods]

If your concerned about no electric maybe consider bio fuels smoke to run a small engine/generator.
Wood chips/leaves/cardboard/junk mail/manure/most dry carbon based material.

The exhaust gives hot air to heat a water heat exchanger also (for winter time heat).

jim