I’m going move in Sept to a house with an unfinished basement. My two wine cabinets are Le Cache units that I bought in 2002 and 2004 (the 2002 still has the original cooling unit). Ideally, I’d like to put the cabinets in the basement but I’m not so sure about tolerance of a dusty, unfinished environment. I can clean the filter frequently, etc, but is anybody else doing this successfully?
Alternatively, what’s the basement temperature like? If decent, might be time to sell on one or both of the wine cabinets, and just use the traditional cool cellar approach?
I had my Vinotheque 700qt in an unfinished basement for 3 years. That was 13 years ago, and it is still going strong. Never cleaned any filters, don’t even know if there are any filters.
Ian is right, the units will barely run, maybe not at all in the winter in MI.
Should be no problem.
I agree with Ian that if the passive cellar temp is ok, just go with that. You can run the units until they die and then take the doors off and use passive. If you plan to be in the house long term, build a dedicated cellar when the units die.
New house is Atlanta. The basement is below grade so it’s cooler than upstairs, not counting a/c, but it’s not upper Midwest anymore. Slab down there is cool cement, not too many windows.
In our previous house, in Greenville, SC as is our current, we had a passive basement closet where we kept the wine. It was a consistent 64 deg year round. You might be ok, just keep it dark.
You can buy some external magnetically placed filters for the fins. That’s what I did when I had my Le Cache in the garage for a couple years. Plenty of grime gets picked up after a while. I don’t know if I would do anything else.
Easiest thing would be to vacuum the basement, or hire a local Maid Brigade or whoever to give it a thorough cleaning, then plug your units in and don’t worry about it.
Brian-
My wine cabinet has been in my very dusty, unfinished basement for 10+ years. The cooling unit is the original (I bought the whole setup used). I vacuum the filters every few months and have had no issues.
If you’re not going to be kicking up dust all day, why worry? Dust settles down unless you’re constantly moving it around. Sounds like a good environment. Worst case you can drape some kind of filtering material that you can wash or shake out from time to time. I wouldn’t worry. Although it’s not like Plymouth, which not only is probably cool enough but has turned into a nice little town with a good coffee shop on Main St.
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+1. Get a good cleaning before you move stuff in (wine and anything else). That should reduce the dust to a reasonable level, and from there the HVAC will likely suck in dust in the air which you can take out with the periodic filter change.
The problem with leaving the basement all dusty, like moderate construction site dusty if that’s the case, is that you track the dust upstairs every time you go grab a bottle.
Thanks, everybody, for the feedback. I have a much better comfort level with the whole thing. By the way, Greg, the great coffee shop you describe in Plymouth is the Plymouth Coffee Bean Company on Penniman Ave. That’s where I buy Brazilian Cerrado whole beans. I will miss the Bean.
Don’t know it - will definitely check it out in a few weeks when I’m in town. I was talking about Espresso Elevado, small, low key, but good coffee. Thanks for the tip! I’ll tell my nephew, who lives there.