What Is A Spring House?

Our new house has a really neat little building called a spring house. I'd never heard of the concept before and now that I'm learning how it works I appreciate we have one.

Spring houses were built in places where a stream was nearby and the water was used to keep the building cold year round. This particular spring house had pipes carrying water from a cistern that catches rainwater and stream water a good distance away from the house. The pipes would bring the water to the spring house where the water kept them room really cold year round. People could store food and milk in there during summer months.

This is a really useful building on a farm. Our goal is to have a big garden and start canning our own foods to have a year round supply of food.

It needs some cleaning!!

I don't think the actual water source in the spring house will be used. It needs some serious maintenance. Water definitely comes in through pipes in the yard but the water is very muddy and dirty where some of the pipes were ripped up and ground water is coming through the pipes under the ground still. It is a very cold room though so it would be good for storing foods.

When the weather is warm I'll clean it up really nice. The walls and floor were painted and the paint is chipped up. I'll scrape it down and repaint it to look nice. It's so cold in there it's like a fridge right now so I'll wait until summer to do any work inside.