I’d ditch the glasses and put a few rows for some more bottles.
Are you in an earthquake zone like SF or LA?
+1 Diamond bins are almost useless, (squares are too IMHO) go with all single bottles. If you have some magnums, you may want a small magnum section.
Thanks everyone. Just going to keep some of the diamond bins as we have large number of larger format bottles and champagne bottles as well.
We do not live in an earthquake area…although who knows what will happen in the future. This cellar is right off our dining room and functions more as a location for some of my bottles. The majority as at off site storage.
They tell me capacity is 500 plus case storage on top of the racks.
As others have mentioned, diamond racks are seriously inefficient unless you just happen to have the exact right-size bottles for your particular dimensions (then they are only somewhat inefficient).
For example, a 13.5" X 12.5" rectangular bin will easily hold (12-14) 3.5" bottles , while with a 13" diamond of almost identical size will only comfortably accommodate 9. This is a big deal, you might very well gain another 60-70 bottles storage just by configuring with rectangles.
Good luck - and thanks Paul and John for the nice words. You can tell I made some mistakes but all in all happy. If you go diamonds - my condolences. I seriously hate them that much. If you want mag space leave room on bottom shelf or have a row of mag storage. But don’t ruin your life with diamond racks (ok maybe a bit dramatic).
My horror story was when I was out of town. I live in Dallas which has expansive soils so we have floating foundations which allows for some movement. Well naturally the house settles - sure enough crash - bottle tumble out and I lose a bottle of Lillian. Wife had to clean all the broken glass and all up - though it did smell good when i got home.
Oh and that reminds me - build a drain in if you can. You will have drops, spills, etc and you will want to clean the floor.
This mess out in Napa right now is exactly the sort of thing that I was envisioning.
If you’re storing anything even slightly better than table wine in California, then your racking needs to be behind wire cages.
And if you’re storing 100-year wines in California - DRC or de Vogue or HB or Latour or Huet or Prum - then each bottle needs to be individually wrapped in something like bubblewrap. Or stored in a big bin filled with styrofoam peanuts.
a certain number of diamonds are good… for bdx style bottles and or some irregular straight side bottles, as well as a nice focal center point, imo. i fully agree with the comments about doing double depth individual racking on at least one side if you can. Display racking is great, but a waste of space for a small cellar. for a balance of aesthetic and function, consider having one wall the “pretty wall” with diamonds and display racks, etc, and the other two side purely functional maximizing storage.
To somewhat echo what John G and a few others have said, I made the mistake of having too many diamond storage bins in my cellar, but I think this somewhat depends on how you buy wine. I don’t buy multiple cases of the same wine. If you do, the diamond bins might be useful, although I’ve found stacking “Burgundy” type bottles is somewhat tenuous, and since I’m in CA, we have quakes, and I wouldn’t want to risk losing bottles to them.
Part of what you should consider is are you looking to maximize storage, or have a showpiece? I love the double-deep racking, and wish I had gone with all of that instead of the diamond bins.