Given the dry, hot desert weather of the province, residents designed a long time ago, easy-to-built, yet quite efficient, cold to Yakhchal provide them with ice during the hot season.

These traditional ice houses, some of which are still in use, have four compartments:
1) Ice Chamber
2) Doom
3) Main Wall
4) Pond or Pool

In the cold season, when there was still sufficient amount of water available, the water would be led into the “pool”, where it would freeze overnight. A tall wall protects the ice from the heat of the sun and as such, layers of ice would form in cold nights throughout winter.

Workers cut the ice into small pieces and led them through a special outlet into a cone-shaped ice compartment, which was dug in the earth. The dome over the ice compartment protected the ice from direct sunrays in order to have it available in the hot season.