CHAPTER XII
THE PASSING OF THE ICE MAN
“How would you like to be the ice man?” is the lyrical refrain to an ancient ditty that is getting more and more obsolete every day, for there is a mechanical conspiracy to oust the ice man from his age-long position as purveyor to the home. So do ice men, gladiators and dogs have their day and relinquish to machinery their evanescent glories.
Nowadays everybody knows that there are domestic refrigerating plants for home use that displace the ice man and in which pure ice for table use can be made. Many people, however, do not realize the reliability of such equipment, the simplicity of its operation, and the satisfaction to be derived from its use, nor yet that there is an actual saving in its use. These facts will, however, be borne out by thousands who have freed themselves from the bondage of the ice man.
Even though few will care just what contributes to making the coldness, it might be well to give a simple explanation of the principle of making ice, in order that the prospective purchaser will know what she is getting.
When you wash your hands they feel cool if you do not dry them. You say they are cool because the water evaporates, but the fact is that the evaporation takes place because the water is drawing on the heat from the air and your hands feel cool in the process. And so in simplest terms engineers have found refrigerants or liquids which vaporize or evaporate at low temperatures, and as they turn from liquids to gasses they use up the heat and leave the air cold. Some of these refrigerants are sulphur dioxide, chloride of ethyl, ammonia, etc.
There are two ways of having refrigeration in the home:
1. The mechanical refrigerator (which is permanently cool with the machinery a part of itself)--one unit.
2. The domestic refrigerating plant (for making ice and steadily producing even, low temperatures) which you can have installed in your own refrigerator--two units.
The general system of home making-ice refrigerators consists of the brine tank with copper coils within, a motor-driven compressor and a condenser of copper piping. The compressed liquid passes through an expansion valve into the brine tank where the pressure is reduced and it changes into a gas, flows out through and is condensed by the condenser, changed back into a liquid, is pumped back again by the motor and starts cycling again--indefinitely. In the best ice-making plants there is a heat control which turns on the motor when the temperature in the refrigerator gets too high and turns it off when it is sufficiently low.
In one refrigerator there is a device by which the food compartments are kept at any temperature you desire, usually around 40°, while the temperature of the ice-making compartment is never allowed to rise above 20°. By this arrangement it is possible, and very often the case, that ice will be made in the ice compartment without running the electric motors for hours, while food is kept in the food compartments at slightly above freezing point. Fancy the health insurance that the best ice-less processes guarantee in the home--infant’s food, for example, can be absolutely fool-proof.
Although the above technical libretto is of some use, the things that most people want to know and are asking are these:
1. Is ice making at home practical?
2. Is it messy?
3. Can I use my old refrigerator?
4. Are they to be had in a special refrigerator?
5. Will I save money?
6. Will it save time and annoyance?
7. What’s the use anyway?
A good refrigerator is a jewel, and it is the first requisite to be considered. It must be insulated well enough to keep out hot air and hold in cold. It must be seamless and smooth in its linings. The air circulation must be continuous. The temperature inside must never be higher than an average of 45° and rarely that. In such a refrigerator one should be able to keep matches dry and butter must never absorb any of the charm of the onion.
If you have such a refrigerator, keep it by all means, and install the ice-making machine. The installation is simple, and the initial expense is readily made up in the future saving of ice consumption. But do not install an excellent ice machine in a poor refrigerator, as the electric bills will climb the Alps. Yet even in a poor refrigerator the refrigeration bills are lower than if you had iced refrigeration.
If you have no refrigerator, it is possible to buy a refrigerator which has in it the ice-making machines. But before you buy the outfit you must be very careful to know whether this refrigerator comes up to the most stringent tests of the ordinary first-class refrigerator, for this reason: The average refrigerator in which ice is used has to be efficient because it must keep itself dry with actual ice evaporation going on, it must keep a cold chest with an actual diminishing ice supply, it must keep ice melting yet staying in spite of weather and surrounding atmosphere. To make the circulation of air effect these processes a refrigerator requires fine construction.
The refrigerating manufacturers have put the most superb effort into making a first-class refrigerator, and if you are not convinced that the combination outfit has as good a refrigerator as you can get with the installed outfit, it is wisest to buy the refrigerator and install the ice-making machine. There are excellent refrigerators on the market; apply rigid tests and accept nothing short of the best.
The machinery can, in some instances, be put on top of the refrigerator or in the cellar or in the next room or right next to the refrigerator. In some cases the machine, consisting of pump and condenser and motor, takes up no more room than 1¹⁄₂′ × 1¹⁄₄′ × 3¹⁄₂′. This can be put in place as simply as installing a new gas stove.
In the best of the iceless machines the refrigerator maintains a lower temperature than the iced ones in both winter and summer. At a cost of ten cents per kilowatt hour, and with ice at fifty cents per hundred pounds, it is cheaper per day to use the iceless refrigerator.
There is, too, less dampness in the iceless refrigerator than even in the best iced ones, due, of course, to the absence of the ice itself. This lower percentage of humidity should not be taken as a reflection on the low percentage of humidity that can be maintained by the iced refrigerator of the best make, which is a percentage low enough to dry towels and keep matches dry.
The iceless refrigerator does these things:
1. Reduces the cost of refrigeration.
2. Maintains a constant low temperature regardless of weather and automatically starts up “cold making” when you raise the temperature by opening the doors.
3. Operates automatically when once installed and is reliable, clean and noiseless.
4. Permits you to make neat little cubes of ice for your tumblers, which give your table distinction.
5. Gives you ice of which you know the clean source.
6. Operates by electricity.
7. Needs no refrigerant for years.
8. Is oiled very seldom.
9. Is easily kept clean.
10. Obviates the uncertain ice man and his dirty boots trailed across the kitchen floor.
11. There is no ice-box drain to clean, no water dripping to worry about and therefore no extra effort.
12. Consumes from 1¹⁄₂ to 2 kilowatt hours per day--if it is run from 6 to 8 hours per day.
The purchaser of an ice-making refrigerator or a domestic refrigerating plant should be warned of the following:
1. A poor refrigerator will mean more electricity to keep up a sufficiently low temperature.
2. Don’t let a manufacturer tell you that a freezing refrigerant, such as sulphur dioxide, will escape and corrode the pipes. It has been tested out and in the best machines has neither escaped nor worn out its pipings.
3. Remember that opening and closing doors raises the temperature even in the magic iceless paradise, and therefore uses more electric power to keep the temperature down.
4. The best machines maintain the ideal and theoretical low temperature.
5. Expect service from the manufacturer.
6. It is best to have the gas air-cooled and not water-cooled because the introduction of water makes for the confraternity of gas and water--a troublesome mess.
7. Demand the temperature-controlling automatic device which starts the refrigerating when the temperature gets up around 39°, and cuts it off when the temperature is low enough to do its work. This saves electricity and wear and tear on the machine.
Some iceless refrigerators make little cubes of ice by putting trays of your favorite drinking water into the brine tank compartments. In these the temperature ranges from 20° to 27°. Desserts, too, can be frozen firmly and surely when placed in these trays.
The brine tank fits easily into the ice compartment of the well-made refrigerator. The brine tank, compressor, condensor and pump come in three sizes, corresponding to an efficiency of making two hundred, three hundred, four hundred pounds of ice per day. Actually these three typical sizes of refrigerators can only store ice to the amounts of one hundred and fifty, two hundred and three hundred pounds, a difference being allowed for melting.
The condensor, compressor and motor of some types of ice machines do not take up any more space than that of 30″ × 16″ × 18″ high. This can be installed anywhere.
When ordering an ice-maker for your home refrigerator, it is well to measure its interior, regardless of its compartments. Get the width, depth and height, and multiply them together. This gives the cubical contents and the manufacturer can then estimate as to the cost and size plant that you need.
At five cents per kilowatt the cost per day of running an entire kitchen by electricity is but fifty cents. Compare this to the cost of motoring per day.
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