Freezing an historic house

I recently took a job at a Museum System where I have been
volunteering for the last nine months.  About six months I
discovered an enormous carpet beetle infestation in an historic
house that spread across several rooms and I suspect had been going
on for a while, looking at the extent of it.  The museum has not yet
done anything as it has no money, freezer, plastic etc, and the
infestation has definitely spread.

I wouldn't normally consider this, but as the house lacks humidity
control, has poorly fitting windows and doors, and has only two
heaters that work, I was considering attempting to freeze the entire
house one day over the winter, having read a brief article about
freezing a herbarium in Studies in Conservation (Volume 39, Issue
Supplement-1).

    Regis B. Miller and Anton Rajer.
    "Freezing the herbarium: a novel approach to pest control"
    Studies in Conservation, volume 39, issue supplement-1
    (September 1994), pp. 19-19

The Herbarium they froze is on top of a building, and has all four
walls exposed to the elements.  They shut off heat to it, drained
the radiators and the pipes, put alcohol in the toilets and then on
a particularly cold day opened all the windows.  The heat then
plummeted to below freezing.  They were able to keep it like that
for several days and then they shut the windows and turned the heat
back on.  They found there to be very little condensation due to the
low RH

Has anyone tried this?  Our problem is that we are in North East
Texas and, although we get some days below freezing over the winter
they are not very common. I will be lucky to keep the house below
freezing for 36 hours.

Zoe Nakashian


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                  Conservation DistList Instance 28:30
                  Distributed: Sunday, January 4, 2015
                       Message Id: cdl-28-30-008
                                  ***