Jasper County Democrat, Volume 22, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 May 1919 — COLD STORAGE PLANT IS AID [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

COLD STORAGE PLANT IS AID

Enables Farmers to Hold Their Perishable Products. CO-OPERATIVE PLAN ADOPTED Ice Can Be Kept All Summer In Inexpeneive Houaea if Proper Care Is Taken When It Is Packed In Winter. ) By W. A. RADFORD. Mr. William A. Radford will answer questions and give advice FREE OP COST on all subjects pertaining to the subject of building, for the readers of this paper. On account of his wide experience aa Editor, Author and Manufacturer, he is, without doubt, the highest authority on all these subjects. Address all inquiries to William A. Radford, No. 1827 Prairie avenue, Chicago, 111., and only enclose three-cent stamp for reply. In some sections of the country farmers are building co-operative coldstorage plants for the proper storage before shipment of perlshubTfe farm products. The accompanying Illustrations show the perspective and floor plan of a moderate-sized, well-built coldstorage building. It is Intended to encourage the proper boxing and shipping of farm produce in a way that will secure the respect of purchasers. Produce properly handled, uniformly packed in the proper carriers and shipped In refrigerator cars pleases customers and assures future sales. The plan of this cold-storage plant provides a packing room where the work of handling Is done to the best possible advantage. Next to the packing room Is a precooling room, 12 by 14 feet In size. This Is sos the purpose of taking the heat out of newly arrived fruit and truck from the farms before being loaded Into refrigerated cars or places in the cold-storage room proper. In either case this pre-cooling room an-

swers as an ante-room to prepare the candidate for further icing. The cold-storage room is 21 by 14 feet in size, with a high ceiling to hold produce in considerable quantity. The other room in the main part of the building holds the ice. Good Construction Required. To be satisfactory a cold-storage building requires good construction. This plan provides a good, solid, concrete foundation with walls and footings solid enough to be permanent. There are concrete floors laid as a foundation for the insulation. Above the regular insulation is a carefully made floor of cement. The walls and celling are made the same as the floor with the exception of the concrete floor underlayer. Waterproofed insulating board is used all around the cold-storage room and the ice room, as shown in the cross sections. It will be noticed that the packing room and pre-cooling room are built in the annex to the main building and have lower ceilings. The space between these ceilings and roof is utilized for the storage of packing materials. Such buildings are useful in communities where small fruits and vegetables are grown to be shipped some distance to large market section?. The man in charge of the cold-storage plant attends to the packing and loading, so that the packages are uniform and true to weights, measures and grades. The farmers simply grow the stuff and haul it to the packing house in packing trays. The man in charge keeps track of each farmer’s account and renders a statement the first of each month. Ice Easily Kept. It is easy to keep Ice all summer If you know how. When ice is Stored away for summer use and leaks away before it is wanted there is a reason for it In the first place there must be a sufficient quantity of ice together to keep cold, and there must be protection against warm air and there must be no leak in the roof. Some of the first farmer ice houses were built underground or partly so. It often happened that drainage was imperfect and that water accumulated in and around the bottom of the house and melted the ice so that by the mid-

dle of summer, sometimes even be fore the month of June, the ice would all be gone. Years ago it was considered necea sary to make very expensive walls to keep the Ice from melting and a great many experiments have been conducted for the purpose of finding out the beat way to build Ice houses. The right principle of refrigerator building has confused builders of Ice houses, and some of them have not yet recognized the difference. An ice house is intended to preserve ice while a refrigerator la intended to make use of it, economically, of course, but when a piece of ice Is put

Into a refrigerator it has a mission to perform. It is required to take the heat out of other material to preserve food products and it must dissipate itself In the process, while ice Is placed in the ice house to stay, to be preserved until wanted for use. An open shed will preserve Ice, or it may be piled up in a field and kept uil summer by simply putting a cover over it to keep off the rain and an Inner covef“orsawdust to keep out the air. Such a crude way of keeping ice is necessarily wasteful, but not to the extent popularly supposed. Roof Must Be Tight. It is quite possible to put a cube of Ice twelve feet through in a cheaply constructed building and so pack it with sawdust as to keep it in a very satisfactory way until wanted during the summer months. The roof must be tight because water dropping often In the same spot will bore a hole through the sawdust covering down to the Ice; warm air will follow and we all know that air must be kept away from ice or It will melt rapidly. Drainage is another very important consideration. The bottom must be

air-tight, but it must be porous enough to allow water to percolate through. For this reason a base formed of rough stones covered with cinders and the cinders covered with a foot of sawdust makes a good bottom. A very satisfactory substitute is made by laying small round poles in the bottom of the ice house covered with straw and the straw covered with sawdust about a foot deep. There is a good deal in packing the ice in the house to make it keep well. It should be put in during cold weather and all the chinks carefully filled with broken ice and the whole mass well frozen together by pouring on water. By doing this very carefully the ice can be frozen together almost solid so the air will all be forced out. There should be a space of a foot between the ice and the sides of the house all around and this foot filled in with sawdust tamped down. The sawdust should be at least a foot deep on top of the ice; 18 inches is better. Must Have Attention. A great deal of ice is lost during the spring months when the weather is getting warm, but not warm enough to require the use of ice in the refrigerator. During these weeks the ice house is forgotten, and it melts a little and settles. The settling process opens cracks in the wet sawdust and some of these cracks will extend through to the ice. After the house is filled and covered with sawdust it should have attention at least once a week. If the sawdust is kept packed down well all around and on top the ice cannot melt very much. There are other details to think about, such as ventilation and shade. It is a great help to have the .bpuse shaded by a large tree or Another building. When the sun beats down hot on top of the roof the temperature inside the building is a great deal higher than it would be with the roof shaded. In choosing the location convenience in using the ice should be considered in preference to convenience in filling the ice house, because the filling is done in a day or two whereas the unloading process occupies several months and requires innumerable trips between the kitchen and the ice house.

Floor Plan.