Cellar Construction for New Home

[Jeff_Braziunas]

I am currently drawing up blueprints for a new home, and plan on building a ~1,000 bottle cellar in the walk-out basement. Note that I live in Minnesota, so temperature and humidity control is a concern. The cellar will simply be used to store wine, not for entertainment purposes, so I am looking for function, not form.

I welcome any comments on pre-construction details I can take to the builder regarding placement, insulation, vapor barrier, etc. Also, any recommendations on which cooling system would be most appropriate would be great too.

Oh and if this has already been discussed extensively please do post the thread

Thanks in advance!

[Michael_S_Monie]

I’ll start. Consider building it larger than you think that you need because they fill quickly. Closed cell foam insulation in the walls and ceiling will give you a great r value and a vapor barrier. And Cellar Pro makes excellent units; you might want to consider a split system to get the noise and heat outside.

[John_Morris]

A couple of other recent threads on the subject:

Another Wine Cellar Design Thread

Wine cellar regrets

[Jeff_Braziunas]

@Michael S. Monie

I’ll start. Consider building it larger than you think that you need because they fill quickly. Closed cell foam insulation in the walls and ceiling will give you a great r value and a vapor barrier. And Cellar Pro makes excellent units; you might want to consider a split system to get the noise and heat outside.

Thanks guys. My current inventory is ~300 bottles, and I doubt my wife will let me get above 500. Hence I am building a 1,000 bottle cellar?

[J_Singleton]

@Jeff Br@ziun@s

@Michael S. Monie

I’ll start. Consider building it larger than you think that you need because they fill quickly. Closed cell foam insulation in the walls and ceiling will give you a great r value and a vapor barrier. And Cellar Pro makes excellent units; you might want to consider a split system to get the noise and heat outside.

Thanks guys. My current inventory is ~300 bottles, and I doubt my wife will let me get above 500. Hence I am building a 1,000 bottle cellar?

Tell her that you won’t let her get above 30 in the shoe closet and wait for the reaction.

[Steve_Brickley]

The previous posts will have the constructions details you are looking for. With mine, I also wanted maximum storage per square foot. So, I put in shelves and tipped cardboard cases sideways on them. I figured I almost doubled (not quite) my storage compared to typical redwood/cedar/pine stick storage. All this at the cost of looks - its not pretty. By the way, I keep the dividers in the boxes firm by glue sticking them to the box side. This gives me the ability to pull bottles from the bottom corners of the box without the upper rows falling down. This has worked for almost three years now with zero signs of pine shelf or box deterioration. My humidity is around 65-75% and temp 52 degrees with a WhisperKool in wall unit (smallest one).