pykrete

[pepa]

    just an opinion

    Ice caves, frozen chasms, walk in coolers, conditioned air and lower fuel bills come to mind as ways to use the frozen sawdust and water material that wooferman posted about yesterday. I grow banana trees in the yard so it would not work for me but places that have a real winter cycle could make good use of the product with a small effort and carry the energy of winter over into the balance of the year. A chasm dug below permafrost and allowed to freeze in layers in the winter months and insulated and covered the rest of the year. A small building built over this chasm that is well insulated and made to be opened to the winter weather would make a very nice area for work or play during the heat of summer and bens built into the floor could make good cold storage areas.

    With protection from the animals at the open areas, the building could be a walk in freezer in winter as well. Coils of flexible sewer pipe could be laid through the block of material to have forced air for the living area of the house if used in moderation. In the winter this same pipe could be opened at the ends to help refreeze the block during winter months  and the cycle goes on. Pepa.

[wooferhound]

It's interesting that they did actually build a ship out of Pykrete for research of the concept. They kept it frozen for a very long time with embedded pipes and refrigeration units on board the ship.

[Fiddlehead44]

        This is really dating myself.

    But when I was a boy, I can fondly remember the horse-drawn Ice wagons

that travelled throughout our town every day during June to Sept. The man had

Ice tongs that made it easy for him to deliver the blocks to every house that

had a blue and white "ICE" sign in the front window. The block was about a cubic foot and kept the Icebox cool for 2 or 3 days. We would follow the wagon and play

in the cool drips falling off the back. Less than one mile away, was the warehouse

alongside the river bank and that was full of Ice and sawdust. This was also a fun place to sneak into and play. During the winter, a crew of men would cut large

blocks out of the river and horses with skids would haul them to the warehouse. They used special one-man-draw-saws to harvest the river's ice and some had a

special knack for splitting the long chunks into salable blocks. Fond memories.

                                             Fiddlehead44

[finnsawyer]

The idea was to build a very large unsinkable aircraft carrier that could fill in the defense gaps between the U.S. and England.  The tests were carried out in Canada, and remains of the ship are still there.  The range of planes, and technology, however, got better and the Wolf Packs were effectively neutralized, which led to the project being abandoned.

[pepa]

those were the days. my gang would hide from the delivery man and one of us would climb onto the wagon and throw the chips down to the rest while the iceman was inside delivering a block. he pretended he did not see us, but he always did. i look in the mirror and see that you are getting old fiddlehead, thanks for the memmory. pepa.

[spinningmagnets]

I recall a program on TV where a small farming community near the US/Canada border had a winter festival every year. One of the events was a manual sawing of ice blocks from the frozen pond surface, which were then pulled by horses to the communities underground shared freezer. The soil roof was about 6-foot thick, and it kept the items placed in it cold throughout the year. Even long after the community had electricity and home refrigerators, they kept doing it because it was fun, and it gave them an excuse to interact during a time when there were no farming activities.

My grandfather told me once about how in the 1930's, thay would slaughter a hog in the winter so it wouldn't spoil, because it took quite a while to process all the parts. They would then smoke and rub a salt slurry on the meat. The result could be hung up in the air without spoiling. They would cut off a piece of the dry hard meat and throw it in with a pot of beans, for flavor and added protein. Long after electricity was available, they clung to the old ways because it was cheaper and reliable. -Ron

[Capt Slog]

Here's one at a stately home near where I live.

http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-vh/w-visits/w-findaplace/w-calkeabbey/w-calkeabbey-garden.htm

Scroll down to "The Big Chill".

I've been indside this, thankfully there was no ice.  I was struck with the thought of what a miserable job it must have been, getting the ice out of the nearby lake a couple of hundred years ago, bearing in mind the clothing that the workers would have.

I'm not certain that food preservation was the point of this ice.  I think it was used for table decorations and making the desserts that became the rage at the time.  How the other 0.0001% lived!