Question
I'm writing from South America, and we want to build a cold room to keep peaches for a couple of weeks. Unfortunately the panels here are too expensive, can you give me some tips to insulate walls and roof without using panels? Thanks, O.U.
Answer
Our web site has a publication on small scale cold rooms and it has a plan for a farm-built cold room. See <http://ucce.ucdavis.edu/files/datastore/234-701.pdf. It uses wood frame construction with fiberglass insulation. If these materials are available, you should be able to build your own room. You can use the general design concepts to build a larger room than is described in the plan. Also posted in our new postharvest video library is a short video detailing the construction of cold storage for small scale produce handlers. -Jim Thompson