Spring house

This article is about the structure. For the Pennsylvania town, see Spring House, Pennsylvania.

A small spring house near Collegeville, Pennsylvania.

A spring house, or springhouse, is a small building used for refrigeration once commonly found in rural areas before the advent of electric refrigeration. It is usually a one-room building constructed over the source of a spring. The water of the spring maintains a constant cool temperature inside the spring house throughout the year. In settings where no natural spring is available, another source of natural running water, such as a small creek or diverted portion of a larger creek, may be used. The main use of a spring house is for the long-term storage of food that would otherwise spoil, such as meat, fruit or dairy products.

The Tomahawk Spring spring house at Tomahawk, West Virginia was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.

See also

• Icehouse (building)
• Windcatcher
• Smokehouse
• Butter

References

• "In the Wake: Cool Food Storage (from Tools for Gridcrash)". http://www.inthewake.org/b1cool.html. Retrieved 2007-05-13. 

• "Hopewell Furnace NHS -- Virtual Tour". http://www.nps.gov/archive/hofu/TOUR/17.html. Retrieved 2007-05-13. 

• "The Spring house". http://waltonfeed.com/old/springhs.html. Retrieved 2007-05-13.