Giving away another million dollar idea !

[Polar Bear]

A couple years ago I posted photos of my folding hard-sided fish-house. Some people asked for plans and photos to build their own. I was told by half dozen people to patent the design and go into the manufacturing business. I'm far too lazy for all that work! Now I'll give you all a pretty cool idea I came up with for sealing up your holes to avoid freeze up.

The problem usually is cold air circulating around the hole. If you have enough snow to bank the house, no problem. What if you don't have snow, or your house sits up too high to bank?

I've seen 12" PVC pipe and bottomless 5 gallon pails used as tubes between the floor of the house and the ice but the problem is they don't seal up completey and you still get air blowing in the house or around the hole causing freeze up.

Here's something I came up with 3 or 4 years ago that costs almost nothing and is gauranteed to be virtually air tight. Its simple to build but a little complicated to explain, here goes:

First, the holes in your floor must be cut circular just the right size so a 5 gal. pail will slide in easily to the first lip. I use an extended base on a router screwed to the floor at the proper radius to cut a perfectly round hole, just the right size.

Next, use a saw to cut off the top (handle section) of the pail saving only the lowest lip which will rest on your plywood floor. Then determine how high above the ice your floor is, subtract 2 inches and cut off the bottom of the pail to this height. Your goal here is to have a cylinder extending from the floor to about 2 inches above the ice.

Next take an ordinary 5 quart ice cream pail and remove the handle and cut off the bottom. The resulting cylinder is just under 8 inches in diameter; perfect for an 8 inch auger.

Connecting the cylinders; Take an ordinary white "tall kitchen" size garbage bag and cut out the bottom to leave a flexible cylinder. With your 5 gal. pail cylinder on a table put the bag inside and pull up the plastic bag and roll it over the lip of your pail about 2 inches and duct tape it completely around the outside of the pail. Now you should have a snug fit cylinder from your floor with a couple feet of plastic bag hanging through the hole.

Now all you do is gather the plastic in roughly equal folds and duct tape it to the outside of the ice cream bucket. Here's the tricky part though: you need to determine how short to cut the bag. Your goal is to have about an inch of ice cream pail extending down into the water of your ice hole. The more pail in the water, the harder to get out when it freezes.

The resulting system is virtually air tight because the pail in the water seals completely and the plastic bag won't leak either. But my favorite part is how flexible the bag is, this means if you accidently drill your holes off center of your floor hole its no big deal. There is enough flex in the bag to just scoot the small cylinder over to the ice hole and drop her in.

I've used these in my house for 3 seasons now with no problems. Holes almost never freeze even in the coldest weather because there is absolutely no wind blowing over the water, also no wind in the house. However, I always remove them when I leave the house and redrill holes and reinstall sleeves the next day.

I hope some of you try making these, I think you'll like them. If anybody dreams up any improvments please let me know.

[Green&Gold]

Brilliant!!!!! I'll give it a try this winter. The only problem is that I have a 10" auger. It wwould still work, the pail just wouldn't be perfectly snug inside the whole as for an 8" hole. I suppose I could find some other 10" cylinder. Thanks for the idea! JH

[blue_healer_guy]

PB, must have a alot of extra time on that job of yours to be thinking about all this! Seen kooney on Sat. and stopped by your house but nobody home.

[monticello coach]

How about just using one of those old style sleds that roll up and are very thin