Old house question

[McHeath]

So a family member just bought a 1924 Craftmans style home nearby.  Nice looking home, in good shape, but it has a serious oddity that I'm stumped by.  It has above ground construction, we called it post and beam when I lived in Texas long ago but I don't know if that's the real name.  Anyway there is a cellar door in the back, and when you go down the steps there is a strange room under the house.  It's circular, about 10 feet around, made of brick, with a concrete shelf, about 18 inches wide, that runs all around it about 3 feet high.  A drain is in the center.  There is an ancient pump sitting on the shelf.

And that's it.  No other rooms in the cellar, no indication what it's for, just a weird round brick room with a single shelf made of concrete. 

Never seen the like.  This is central California as well, so basements and cellars are rare to start with and pretty much vanish on homes built after the war. 

Anyone know what it's for?

[Russ Kirk]

Could it be a cistern for storage of water?

Russ....

[Dan/Panther]

Sounds to me like a root cellar.
D/P

[Greg G.]

Prohibition-era still?

[Phonesrfun]

Perhaps a coal-fired furnace room?

[AE_Collector]

Bomb / Fallot Shelter dug in during the cold war era?

Terry

[AET]

I would almost guarantee it's a cistern, old storage for water.  We've had many of them in our homes.

[Bill Cahill]

Seems obviously to be some sort of water well. That idea sounds logical, except, usually, they are outside to collect rain.
My guess is possibly once drinking water?
If I could see the old pump I might know better. Even a picture of the "room".
Bill Cahill

[McHeath]

These are all interesting ideas.  I will get a picture of the room when I'm next down there, it may be a bit.  The root cellar is what I thought at first, storing canned goods and all, but it's weird in that the room is not finished up to the floor of the house.  Instead it ends at the level of the topsoil and so you can see all the underside of the house, the crawl space.  Weird.

So that would rule out bomb shelter.

Hmm, a coal fired furnace room, that's interesting and perhaps what it was.  I've seen other homes in the area from the time with those furnaces intact, and that could explain why it is open to the crawl space as the duct work would have gone there.  Now the house is central heat/AC conditioned and the ducts are in the attic, this is a modern addition. 

The water well idea is also interesting.  My esposita thought that perhaps a tank was in the room, but then where is the tank now?  Removing it would have been impossible without cutting it apart.

[Jim Stettler]

If the house was originally spring fed (the pump came later as the water table receded?).
Then it might possibly be a "refrigerator". I have seen a local mansion that had a spring in the cellar of the servant house. The spring routed thru several concrete channels and was used as a refrigerator. The ledge in this house makes me think this is a possibility.

The spring that fed the mansion was a constant 39 degrees year round. The spring still flows and the water still fills the channels, however it is no longer used for refrigeration.

Just a thought,
Jim

Post and beam construction is typically just a frame w/ corners and edges. Old time houses used balloon framing which required studs the height of the exterior walls. Current framing practice is called platform frame construction. You build (or pour) the floor (platform) and then frame  8' walls on the platform, raise them, build the 2nd floor platform ect.

Around here they still will use post and beam for garages, horse barns  and other outbuildings.

[Dan/Panther]

Thomas Jefferson made tunnels to the Potomac River from under his home Monticello as a primitive A/C system. From what I understand the updraft cool air from the River kept the house rather cool in summer.
It very well may be a cistern, that would be my next guess.
D/P

[AET]

Our last old house, had no basement, but just an old cistern, it was all brick, round, with a shelf about 4 and a half feet up, and brick floors.  It had been converted into a basement later on. 

[Dan/Panther]

I can only imagine how many bugs and small rodents drowned in that open top cistern.
D/P

[McHeath]

Interesting Tom, that sounds pretty much exactly like this room.  Weird though, an open top cistern.  Maybe it had a cover at one point.  Bug mania otherwise! 

[Kenny C]

thanks D/P i was eating