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9:37 am
April 18, 2012
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With the advent of refrigeration and freezers, most people forgot about spring houses but I have seen a few people (in the country) who still use them.
We have a spring that comes right out of the hill with ice cold water and we have been pondering building a spring house for the heck of it over it.
Just wondering if anyone has one that they still use.
2:20 pm
May 31, 2011
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No, but I'd love one, if I had a spring!
Teacup
2:48 pm
December 14, 2010
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Most of the springhouses were used to store fresh milk in a purpose made tank until the milk truck came. All springhouses had a dipper for drinking water, and adult beverages were kept cold there also. Watermelons were delightfully cold and fresh when floated in the tank.
2:50 pm
June 2, 2010
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I don't have one but my aunt and uncle still use the one on their farm. It's from the original farm from 1737. When they have parties the drinks and anything that won't fit in the fridge is stored in the spring house.
My friend's have one at their house and they use it to cool their milk down after milking their cow. Works better than the fridge or a sink filled with ice.
5:30 pm
February 22, 2010
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We had a spring house when I was a kid…Boy was that water cold!
The spring was on the hill and the water came down to the spring house through a pipe.
It also had a long ice storage built off to the side of it. We never used it. My dad said people used to cut blocks of ice from the river and store it in the building.
My grandfather used to drive a team of horses over the Muskingum River in Ohio… back in the early 1900's…I am not even sure if the river freezes over anymore.
5:52 pm
April 1, 2009
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How wonderful to have a spring house, I remember my Aunt and Unclle had one on their dairy farm, that was the colest water ever, like Ross mentioned, I remember my Uncle put watermelons and cases of pop and beer in the water when there were family get togethers everthibg was icy cold, my Aunt kept so of her canned goods on shelves as well as in their root cellar, wich also doubled as a storm cellar.
You are quite lucky.
8:32 pm
December 28, 2011
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ooo… I'm so jealous, littlebird. I would TOTALLY go for it! Even if it's just for overflow! The springhouse that was originally on our old TN farm (house dated to 1890's) was stone- to help insulate and keep cool. I've also seen a more modern one made of concrete block for the same reason.
The people who originally owned our farmhouse still lived in the same area, and when one of them died, a bunch of family members came by the house to look around (and we let them all wander around the property telling us stories about their grandparents and great grandparents). They said the spring house had been used as recently as the 1960's by their grandparents, and the best thing in the world was a watermelon from the springhouse!
9:17 pm
December 14, 2010
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Springhouses are built of masonary because the damp conditions will completely distroy wood in ten years.
11:06 pm
October 5, 2010
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We have a spring. we have a tank in the ground and water is naturally fed down to the house. Its been going strong for 32 years now. So when we lose power we still can get power an with a gas stove can still cook. The over flow from the spring goes in my garden pond and then back out to the big pond.
11:14 pm
December 14, 2010
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There is a farm, where I do some work now and then, that draws water from a placed called Indian Spring some two miles from the farm buildings. For the last hundred years water has been piped gravity flow to a resevoir up on the hill above the houses and barns. This year they had to replace the pipes from the resevoir down to the barns and houses. This time they had machinery to do the digging the first time it was all dug by hand with pick and shovel.
6:35 am
October 17, 2010
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We had a spring house when I was little. We called it the "ram house" because the hydraulic ram pumps which pumped water up the hill to my grandparents' farm, were in there. I can hear them now, chugging away, "thunk…swish…thunk…swish". It was always nice and cool in there in the summertime.
One time my father built a little water wheel in the brook which ran beside the ram house.
And there was always a fish in the spring, to keep the water clean he said. Sometimes there was a frog in there too!
I wonder if it is still there? Probably not, when the farm was sold the new owners put in a well up there, so probably the ram house is long gone.
10:56 am
April 18, 2012
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Wow! Love hearing all your replies!
We have 4 springs on the property but this one is situated right in the middle of a pasture, coming out of the hillside with a deep cut through the granite rocks it flows over and ice cold water.
We have been pondering a few ideas on what to do with it!
Great idea on watermelons in there!
12:59 pm
February 10, 2009
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Our spring, which unfortunately dried up a number of years ago at the same time our well did… (long story, but the new well is now very deep and tastes horrible!) used to first fill up a large (very large) glazed earthenware cylinder which I can only think was a very old culvert pipe because it had an enlarged 'lip' which would fit the narrow end of another pipe. That section of pipe was sunk deep in the ground and the bottom was clean smooth river stones. We drained it and cleaned it out every couple of years, loosening the small amount of algae like stuff that grew in there, it wasn't much surprisingly enough, and we tried not to disturb the stones too much.
It wasn't a covered spring house though, just an out-in-the-open thing. When we first moved here, there was no indoor plumbing, and the electric was … sketchy shall we say? We hauled drinking water from that spring and chilled things by sinking them into the tank. We did have to fill jugs out of the spring pipe, not by dipping out of the 'tank' for drinking water, I'm not sure it would have passed any health dept tests, but it was very sweet water, not at all mineral tasting and no odor at all (unlike our current 'approved' well, ugh)
I miss that old sweet well water, and that spring too, though the area below the spring area was a bit mushy. Now it's nice and dry and easy to mow, but I'd trade it in a hearbeat for the old mushy section fed by sweet water.
2:10 pm
December 14, 2010
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BEG, we have had many wells in Harford county go dry when new subdivisions were built nearby and were also supplied by well water.
7:25 pm
February 10, 2009
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We know the cause, that's why the new deep well. The old one was quite shallow, obviously related to the surface spring in fact.
3:52 am
September 16, 2010
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We too have a spring with an old glazed earthenware pipe for a reservoir. This spring has been on this farm since 1900 and we still use it for our water supply. We added a pump to bring the water to a 1200 gallon storage tank and installed a pressure tank and pump in the house when we rebuilt it. The water is always cold and tastes wonderful. We've been drinking it for11 years and we're still alive :-)
12:34 pm
June 7, 2011
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There was one on the farm where we lived when I was in my early teens. It was built into the side of the hill, right outside the back kitchen door. The farm house was at least circa 1800, maybe older.
My dad used to keep beer and wine in it. It was rather large and there were a couple of stone steps that decended into a large-ish rectangular pool that, in my memory was about 4' x 8" and about 2 feet deep. There were "shelves" built into the sides.
I think this was also the source of our drinking water. We had "normal" running water but also had a hand pump in the kitchen and I loved using that pump! The water was so cold it would hurt my teeth.
I remember bright orange salamanders in the spring house.
It seemed like every farm had a spring house but my dad was the only one that I can remember actually using it.
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