Could a block of ice cool a ten foot square room?

[Marco Moock]

Given an average ten foot square room, is it possible to cool it by putting a big block of ice in the middle to melt?

[Ed P]

Sure. Now you have to figure how much you want to cool it, what the ambient temperature is, and the temperature of the ice block.

one pound weight of ice at 32°F requires 144 Btu of heat to change it all into water at the same temperature

[Thomas]

Wrapping my head around Ed's reply is tough right now but... Ice at zero is going to do way more than ice at 32 which is melting as you look at it. Really good insulated room is a must to keep more heat out. The cooling will be at floor level, heat rises, cold sinks. An electric fan blowing on it cancels progress due to heat from the motor. Best way to experiment is to fill up a coleman cooler or such with ice and check it out. You are not going to be impressed.

[kelown]

The increased humidity will eventually neutralize any cooling effect unless you have a way of venting the humidity without increasing the heat in the room. This sounds similar to the way a swamp cooler works, but you're supposed to position their backside to face out to a window.

[Dean Hoffman]

Your question made me think of ice boxes and ice houses. The first recorded ice house construction goes back to 1775 BC in Sumaria. It was in the 1940s before my parents got electricity in south central Nebraska and a modern refrigerator.

[Bob F]

I remember as a kid discovering an old abandoned ice storage facility along the shore on the Canadian side of Lake Erie. I was amazed that the insulation in the walls was just sawdust. They would harvest ice from the lake in the winter and store it in this big "shed" for use the rest of the year.

[kelown]

Sumeria was located at the northern edge of the Persian Gulf. How did they make ice back then?

[Cindy Hamilton]

Brought down from the mountains, just as the Romans did it somewhat later.

[micky]

My mother would hope the iceman would give her a sliver of ice to suck on, during the summer.

By the time I got here, we had a refrigerator, a Shelvador, named because it has shelves on the door. Now they all do but it was an innovation. It was a Crosley, I think.

[micky]

When she was a little girl, that is.