I remember a Countryside article on them not too long ago. MEN has an article in their new issue too. I wondered if they are hard to build. They sound very interesting to me but Hubby thinks I'm nuts (but what else is new?:)). Any advice, or experiences? Thanks!!

-- Kathleen (KathleenRoberts@webtv.net), June 05, 2000

Answers

Oh wow! I don't, but sure wish I did! I can't wait for responses. My dad had an idea for a spring house built into the basement of a house. I think there might be an article on spring houses in the Back To Basics book.

-- Abigail F. (treeoflife @sws.nb.ca), June 05, 2000.

Back to Basics doesn't have a full article on them, just a rough drawing and a quickie description...but it's detailed enough that it might give you somewhere to start. It's in the water supply section of the 1st chapter (I had to hunt through my copy three times before I found it!) They sound so (forgive the expression) cool! Let us know how it goes!

Ali

-- Ali (cloudyjewel@juno.com), June 05, 2000.

Our family has a cabin where we use a spring for all our water needs. alas no spring house, just a filter, tank and springbox. When I lived in southern California I went to look at a piece of property in Moreno valley that had a real spring house. It was really more of a cement tunnle built into the side of a hill. It went into the hill about fifteen feet or so. Inside it was very cool. Along one wall there was a cement trough that was probably 8 inches deep. Years ago the owners had ket their food cold in this. This one had been built in the twenties. After the water had passed through the trough it went into an outdoor storage tank. The tank stored water for the house. It had an overflow outlet into an open tank with a pump that pumped the water up the hill behind the house to another tank for landscaping irrigation. This setup was amazing. Really something to behold. What was really amazing was that this house was like an oasis in the desert. On the hills around it grew cactus and in the little canyon it was like a tropical island. Truly fascinating. The only problem here was that although the little canyon had water it had almost no flat land. But what little it had was beautiful. I think I will always wish I bought that property.

Little Bit Farm

-- Little bit Farm (littlebit@calinet.com), June 05, 2000.

Spring houses. Took some pictures last month of 2 different ones in the Smoky Mts. As somebody posted above about one in the side of a hill-these were built into a small building. On one side was a log split lengthwise and hollowed out so it was about 12" wide and 10" deep. It ran the entire length of the building which was about 10 ft. It also had an overflow that didn't let the water level get any lower than about 8". Water was piped into the house by a conduit of small tree trunks that had been split and hollowed out as the inside had been -only these were much smaller. I'm and old dummy and don't know how to email or post the pictures--or I would. Oh well, I'm so used to being an old dummy i've kinda learned to "work around" it. LOL I don't have acess to any running water or I would have one of those dudes and throw out this energy hoggin frost free refrigerator. Hope this info helps. Matt. 24:44

-- hoot gibson (hoot@otbnet.com), June 05, 2000.

Walton Feed - The Old Timer Page has a lot of interesting stuff, including info on spring houses and a lot more.

-- Don Armstrong (darmst@yahoo.com.au), June 06, 2000.

We have a 8'x2'x2' concrete trough in our root cellar that has a spring inlet and the overflow runs down a drain. We have not used it yet--we have it capped off. Rumour has it a formor owner used it to cool his condensor coils for his still.

-- Joel Rosen (Joel681@webtv.net), June 08, 2000.