A Cold Packing House.—On large fruit farms a building designed to properly care for the fruit during shipping and packing, and as a store house for temporary use, is desirable. The illustrations below (Figs. [91] and [92]) are taken from a ventilated fruit house with insulated walls, which has operated very successfully in Ontario County, N. Y. A perspective view is shown in [Fig. 91]. The main building is 24 × 36 feet, built into a slight hill. The basement is built with stone walls eighteen inches thick, extending two feet below the surface and rising six feet above it.
The floor is made of eight inches of clean coarse gravel, with a coat of hydraulic cement grouted in a finishing coat on top, thus making a dry, hard floor.
FIG. 91. PERSPECTIVE VIEW OF FRUIT HOUSE.
The basement is divided into convenient apartments. The entrance is from the front and north sides, the floor being almost level with the outside surface. Both the doors and windows are double, the latter being provided with screens to keep out insects when open for ventilation. This basement is ceiled with inch boards, on top of which, between the joists, is placed an inch and one-half of mortar.
The upper building is fourteen feet to the eaves, the main story being eight feet in the clear. The studding is five inches wide, and on the outside are two thicknesses of damp-proof paper, over which weather boards are placed. On the inside of the studding are two layers of paper, then a two-inch wide studding on which the paper is again doubled; over this comes matched inch lumber, making two dead air spaces to insure against the changes of outside temperature affecting that on the inside.
The ceiling of this room is formed by putting one thickness of paper on the joists, covered with matched lumber. The floor is of matched two-inch plank, thus making dead air spaces between the cellars and the upper room, and also rendering it impervious to rats and mice. ([Fig. 92].)
This floor is occupied by an office and stairway in one end, and these leave a clear floor space of 24 × 24 feet, for storing and packing purposes. Shelves, thirty-two inches deep, are placed all around the wall of this room, and are capable of holding about seven tons of grapes or other fruits, leaving the center for such as are in barrels.
From the east side of this room a door opens into the raised portion of the shed. Through this door the fruit can be unloaded from the wagon without any lifting. This shed runs the whole length of the building and is sixteen feet wide, with a ground floor. It is ample to accommodate packing, also several loads of fruit over night or through a shower.
