Armed Polite Society

Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Ben on December 17, 2018, 11:47:31 AM

Title: A New Invention
Post by: Ben on December 17, 2018, 11:47:31 AM
A new invention that keeps stuff cold underground.  :laugh:

https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2018/12/17/come-on-invention-of-underground-fridge-that-keeps-food-cold-without-any-electricity-rocks-science-tech-world-wait-maybe-not/
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: AZRedhawk44 on December 17, 2018, 12:15:16 PM
Next thing they'll be inventing BO-ATs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLKJb-iN7f0

Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: Ben on December 17, 2018, 12:42:58 PM
I will say that outside of "Gee, look at this new method to keep stuff cold!", the idea of the, I assume, waterproof and element resistant container is good, not that you can't buy underground storage tanks and whatnot and do the same thing. I think here you're paying for both new, and the convenience of molded-in steps and whatnot. Makes for cleaner food storage as well as animal resistance. I've seen some nasty examples of home built root cellars.

Depending on price, I'd consider a "drop-in" before digging my own.

Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: brimic on December 17, 2018, 12:52:27 PM
Wait until that generation (where every idea is Amazing!) discovers food preservation by adding salt, sugar, smoke, or all 3.
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: 230RN on December 17, 2018, 01:04:02 PM
My first thought was the ammonia cycle and geothermal energy.

I remember rigging the Forced Air Gas heating system in my old farmhouse to suck in cold air from the basement and blow it around the first floor.  Visitors thought the place had central air conditioning.

Wait until that generation (where every idea is Amazing!) discovers food preservation by adding salt, sugar, smoke, or all 3.

Or subtracting moisture.[citation needed]  =D

Makattak remarked once[1] that leftists (or read it as "millenials") seem to think that nothing happened before yesterday[2].

And if it ain't[definition needed] on line, it must be new.

Terry

1. Personal knowledge.
2.The 24-hour period before today's 24-hour period.

Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: MechAg94 on December 17, 2018, 04:35:18 PM
I don't think I have ever seen a root cellar, but I have heard of them. 
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: zxcvbob on December 17, 2018, 10:26:47 PM
I have no problem with making improvements on prior technologies.  Even ancient technologies are fair game.  I like seeing stuff like that.  Just don't call it an invention.

Like the "I invented a clock" troll-boy.
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: charby on December 17, 2018, 10:35:53 PM
It needs to be deeper than the deepest frost. Where I live now, done right, it will be ~52F year round.
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: charby on December 17, 2018, 10:40:20 PM
I'm waiting for the person to reinvent the ice house and cutting ice in the winter time.
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: Ben on December 17, 2018, 11:01:18 PM
I'm waiting for the person to reinvent the ice house and cutting ice in the winter time.

Yeah, but the ice delivery guys...


https://youtu.be/jPD1n-l_Lqw?t=210
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: charby on December 17, 2018, 11:05:15 PM
Yeah, but the ice delivery guys...


https://youtu.be/jPD1n-l_Lqw?t=210

LMFAO

but doesn't this look like fun?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wi0GzgymbU
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: Hawkmoon on December 17, 2018, 11:56:21 PM
I don't think I have ever seen a root cellar, but I have heard of them. 

How about a wine cellar?
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: K Frame on December 18, 2018, 06:24:05 AM
I can't even count how many of my friends had root cellars when I was growing up.

I even have a cookbook from the Culinary Arts Institute that describes how to make a small but effective root cellar.
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: Hawkmoon on December 18, 2018, 09:50:15 AM
LMFAO

but doesn't this look like fun?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Wi0GzgymbU
When I was a child, my uncle lived on what had been my great-grandmother's farm. The old ice house was still there, with several feet of sawdust that was used for packing around the blocks of ice as insulation. There was an abandoned road that led down a long hill about a half mile to a pond where they cut the ice.

That uncle had no sense of history. He tore down the wood shed and converted the ice house into something else. I always thought that was unfortunate.
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: K Frame on December 18, 2018, 10:42:21 AM
Actually I think that's pretty neat that he converted the ice house to something else. After all, what's he supposed to do, cut ice on the pond? Or just let the ice house continue to be unused and largely useless until it rots into the ground?

By converting it at least he kept the "ice house."
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: MechAg94 on December 18, 2018, 11:10:00 AM
How about a wine cellar?
I live on the Texas Gulf Coast.  While I am sure some people have underground stuff at the house, it is rare. 

I do recall hearing that my great grandfather would store beef at the local ice house in town.  I don't think anyone does that anymore since freezers and electricity are common.
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: charby on December 18, 2018, 12:23:00 PM
I live on the Texas Gulf Coast.  While I am sure some people have underground stuff at the house, it is rare. 

I do recall hearing that my great grandfather would store beef at the local ice house in town.  I don't think anyone does that anymore since freezers and electricity are common.


Renting meat locker space was pretty common in the Midwest into the 1950s when reliable electricity was finally everywhere.
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: K Frame on December 18, 2018, 12:39:28 PM
Renting locker space at the local ice house was, I think, common everywhere into the 1950s.

Once American manufacturers began to catch up on the enormous post war demand for refrigerators and freezers (and just about everything else, really), though, that changed, and changed fast.
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: brimic on December 18, 2018, 01:04:08 PM
We were renting locker space into the 80s when I was a kid.
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: charby on December 18, 2018, 01:52:48 PM
We were renting locker space into the 80s when I was a kid.

Did your folks buy whole animals and have them slaughtered/packed? The only folks I remember with lockers that late back home were large families that would slaughter several animals and kept the meat at the big locker in town. The locker/ice plant in my home town was torn down in the early 2000s but it's last hurrah is that it made hail for the movie "Twister". It had a giant steam engine ammonia plant with it.
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: K Frame on December 18, 2018, 03:53:35 PM
The old ice plant in Harrisburg, Pa, operated as a cold storage facility into the 1980s. I remember the sign painted in black and yellow on the side of the building, but I can't remember where it was located.
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: 230RN on December 18, 2018, 05:18:52 PM
Yeah, but the ice delivery guys...


https://youtu.be/jPD1n-l_Lqw?t=210

Hah ha, I knew which one that was before I even clicked on it.

We had ice delivered to the house in the mid-forties.  Also milk.  Also coal.  By the late forties, we had modernized to an ammonia cycle refrigerater, store-boughten milk, and converted the coal furnace to gas. fuel oil.

That was great, 'cause it was my job to take care of the coal-burning furnace from startup in September-ish to May-ish.  Stationary Engineer by age 10, I was.

Terry, 230RN

Edited to add -ishes.
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: MechAg94 on December 18, 2018, 05:35:27 PM
Did your folks buy whole animals and have them slaughtered/packed? The only folks I remember with lockers that late back home were large families that would slaughter several animals and kept the meat at the big locker in town. The locker/ice plant in my home town was torn down in the early 2000s but it's last hurrah is that it made hail for the movie "Twister". It had a giant steam engine ammonia plant with it.
My great grandfather ran cattle so that is likely what he was doing. 
Title: Re: A New Invention
Post by: Larry Ashcraft on December 18, 2018, 07:14:29 PM
We had lockers at the local butcher shops until dad bought a deep freeze in the 1960s.  Dad would routinely shoot two deer and an elk every year.

On the root cellar, an old deep freeze buried in the ground with some good insulation on top works well.  I just wish I had read about that a few years ago when we replaced our deep freeze and scrapped the old one.  Carrots, potatoes and onions keep well in those.

Now, with seven people in the house, we buy two or three whole steers a year for the entire family, two daughters and families included (17 people in total).  We have two deep freezes and an upright, and both daughters have their own freezers.