Is there a positive seal between the framing of the cellar walls and the concrete wall and floor of your basement?
Sounds like a lot of money for an active cellar that doesn’t do much more than most passive cellars. By controlling the flow through the single HVAC vent in the room I use for a wine cellar, the temperature usually stays between 59˚ and 62˚ with a minimum low of 58˚ and a maximum high of 64˚ without any special insulation or cooling unit. I’d be calling the contractor that built yours for sure!
Crap. My passive cellar is 63.3 degrees right now and was this morning. About four months ago it was about 60. It only changes while i am in there by a few tenths of a degree.
Right, the 18 degrees (assuming it’s legit) has to be some kind of average. The wine, as pointed out, will have faster aging components and slower aging ones, since it’s a rather complicated substance (and a good thing that, otherwise most of us wouldn’t be here 
).
That’s what I was trying to say. The difference is you actually understand chemistry. ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
The underinsulation is a possibility. I don’t think it’s a coolant leak or fan issue, though I have no proof of that and I suppose it is possible. Finally, it’s vented into a fairly large hallway via a duct that leads to a metal vent, all materials supplied by the manufacturer. I suppose a more accurate description is that the back end of the unit is in a small room about 1/2 the size of a cellar. The manufacturer advised that this room was too small to absorb the heat from the chiller, and instead recommended using an add-on duct (that they supplied) to send the warm air to a wall vent and out of this smaller room into a much larger hallway. There is warm air, about 80 degrees, blowing through this vent whenever the chiller is on.
It’s blowing at 53 degrees using the IR thermometer. The warm air side is indeed about 80 degrees. The ambient air temp of the room I’m venting to is room temp (my wife keeps it at about 70 degrees).
Good idea, I’ll try this.
Yeah, without naming names it’s one of the big wine cellar installation specialists in Chicago. As I mentioned earlier, they’ve done some fairly large restaurants and also the in-store chilled room for my local Binny’s.
I actually thought of this today and turned it up to a set point of 60. No point in trying to force the unit to get to a temp that it clearly cannot hit right now.
I do think that the fact that this cellar includes 2 exterior walls – even though they are underground walls – is not helping. The problem is clearly related to the outdoor temperature, as this problem was not present in the fall and winter. That said, there might indeed be other problems that are compounding this immediate summertime issue. These are all good ideas, thanks for listing them.
I’ll keep everyone updated.
This post is making me nervous every for when I build my ground level wine cellar. Are other people having trouble keeping their cellars at a solid 55 degrees?
Same here as I am currently building mine out in the midst of a total basement renovation.
Have you got shrubs shading the ground and outside foundation that is “exterior”? This will help a lot if that area gets any sunshine. But the minimal temperature swings you mention will not harm your wines. You may even get impatient for them to “age”. I have a passive cellar that goes from 58 to 68 every year, and after 20 years all my '96s are still “youthful”. So are the '90s ,'91s, '93s etc. Winemaking seems to have changed circa 1988 , at least in Burgundy. Coates mentions that year as the start of a “modern” era, where there was less oxygen exposure prior to bottling and the wines were 'fresher" going into the bottle. I remember '66 - '72 vintage Burgs that were nicely (and definitely) mature at age 18. Not any more! I think my wines will outlive me by a long shot now, even at the 58 - 68 yearly temperature.
OK, a little follow up – does the ducting have multiple bends in it? This restricts the ability of the fan to move the warm air efficiently away from the heat exchanger.
Your unit is pumping in cold air as it should, so you have either a poorly insulated room or an undersized compressor (or both). Unplugging it will not help you, as the unit is functioning fine. Don’t bother.
One thing I would try is to temporarily disconnect the ducting from the back of the unit and let it vent directly into the small adjacent room. To dissipate the heat from that room, open the door and put a big fan in the doorway blowing the heat out. See if the unit can work more efficiently with this set up. If this helps, see about installing a fan in the ducting itself to help push the heat out.
I’m still not clear if your contractor is a glorified carpenter or if they truly understand cellar design and construction. My guess is the former.
Since Wine Guardian doesn’t make a higher BTU through the wall unit, if you upgrade the unit you will have to do some work to get the new unit to fit. Still a lot cheaper than taking the cellar down to the studs.
Planting shrubs is also a good idea on any exterior walls gettting direct sunlight. You could also dig out some dirt from the foundation and install some rigid foam insulation on the outside of the host as far down as you can get it. The top couple of feet of soil is obviously the warmest.
Just backing you up, that’s all
Just one bend. The ducting comes directly off of the back of the unit, goes across the top of the room to an adjacent wall, and then curves downward to a metal grate vent at the bottom of the wall.
This is actually something I tried last fall when I was initially troubleshooting similar temperature issues. At first, when I set the chiller to 55, it seemed like it would not get down to this set temp. The unit would display a temp of 57 for hours while it continuously operated. In the process of trying to figure out why, removing the duct and opening the door to the small room housing the back end of the chiller is something that we tried, but it did not change anything and so we put it all back together again. What was interesting was that it did finally get down to 56, but it took something on the order of 12 hours. Then, once it did hit 56, it would cycle on-off every 5 minutes or so. Then, we left it at a set point of 55, and it took something like 48 hours until the unit hit the set point and shut off. So, we left it at 57, where it cycled on for 5 but then shut off for 25-30 minutes.
Now, it seems like I have a similar problem, just to a much more exaggerated degree. Instead of it not getting to 56, it can’t get to 59, and I’m presuming that this is an outdoor/summer problem. I have been noticing this for over a week now (instead of 48 hours), and unlike the time problem when it couldn’t hit 56 in the fall, now it simply does not hit 59 in the summer. It may be even longer than a week, but I was out of town the week before last and would not have seen it.
Like you, I presumed that this was an insulation problem. But, there’s an interesting question that my wife and I struggle with. One would think that if this was truly a problem with insulation, we would be able to rapidly get down to some set temp but then quickly lose it. It’s not like there is flowing air coming in from a crack in a wall that the chiller is constantly battling. And it’s in the basement, which is actively cooled by the house AC to 70 degrees. If this is indeed an insulation problem, it makes no sense to me why the chiller cannot dump a huge quantity of cold air into the room, but then have to do it over and over and over again because the room loses heat so quickly. One would think that since this is not the observed pattern, that insulation is actually less likely. Which then leads me to question whether the problem is the chiller itself. But it certainly seems to be functioning normally. The IR temp of the air output is a constant 53-54 degrees. So why can’t it get there? The room is only about 10(L)x6(W)x8(H) – it’s certainly not massive. Totally perplexed.
We ultimately agreed that it’s a challenge to create a room sized refrigerator in one’s home, and that 57 was basically as good as 55.
It’s a challenge but not impossible by any means. The problem is that people build their cellars like closets but want them to act like refrigerators, i.e. they build with wood 2x4s, drywall, etc. You can definitely buy room-size refrigerators and most restaurants have them - they’re called walk-in coolers.
Not a big deal. There are lots of compromises we make in life and they’re usually not fatal.
Seems to me like you have too little insulation. Also, being under the garage is horrible - garages are seldom cooled and they get really hot during the summer.
Still, it’s not like you need to worry. The fact that you can measure all the things you do doesn’t mean you should. Sometimes walking in and knowing it feels cool is sufficient, and better for your mental health than knowing that it’s a few degrees off your goal.
Remember that nobody ever stored wine like they started to in the last part of the 20th century. The buildings may have been made out of stone and that insulated somewhat and that was that. People stored wine in places that “felt” cool. There weren’t subways and tractor-trailers rumbling by so the places tended to be fairly still.
Centuries later, people went in with instruments to measure various parameters and decided that 57 was optimum and that the wine had to be perfectly still and that no UV light could ever shine on the bottles, etc. Then they started trying to reproduce those circumstances, or rather not reproduce, but build to the specs they had created, which may or may not have been optimum or entirely required.
Go to those old farmhouses and caves and cellars - nobody ever know what the hell 57 degrees was. And their wines did OK.
So I wouldn’t worry at all. Your wine is fairly cool, it’s not boiling out of the bottles, the air may change but as you know the liquid doesn’t change temp nearly as fast, and the changes you’re describing are well within the parameters of “cool enough”. I’ve stored wine in similar conditions for many years and it’s turned out fine. You’re good. Enjoy your wine!
Do you know what humidity levels are like? With the unit running so much they should be well in check if the vapor barrier is solid; if they’re high, the unit could just be working more like a dehumidifier. What sort of insulation is there and is the vapor barrier on the outside of the room (warm side)? If not, and particularly if you have fiberglass batts, the insulation performance would decrease over time as it picks up water. Especially with dew points where they’ve been in Chicago lately.
Both of the above could certainly be OK, and as others said it could just be too little insulation… the room just reached an equilibrium with heat flow from the outside.
At 53-54 cool air temp coming from the unit, you never get to 55, usually more like 56-57, which seems to be the limit of your unit. Nothing wrong with that, so just plan on setting it there and accepting that as a perfectly fine cellar temp. As others have said, the range, up to 61-62 in the summer months, is also fine, but you are going to pay for it in power bills. The tips of outside shrubs and exterior insulation will only mitigate the peaks a bit, and maybe save a little on the power bills.
Also, it always takes time at first to chill a new cellar to temp. Even with no wine in it, there’s a lot of thermal mass that keeps contributing heat that the unit has to pump out. Add a thousand pounds of wine and glass, it takes even more time, and when the cellar appears to reach the set point and the unit shuts off, a lot of that mass still is above your cellar temp, so the air warms up quickly and the unit runs again. Repeat for days. The more wine you have in it (once it has reached cellar temp) will help the unit run more efficiently. and cycle off for a longer period of time.
GregT, your post has gone a long way to unburdening my neurosis. Thanks for the thoughts, it helps a lot to put this all into perspective. I’ll probably just set the chiller to 60 or 61 in the summer, and back to 57 in the spring/fall/winter. At least this gets me to “cool enough”, as you say, without burning out my chiller and watching my electricity bill skyrocket.
I am truly curious why I am having this problem, but perhaps there are better things for me to worry about.
All good points. I think I’m good with the plan that you’ve outlined, it is the most low cost, low stress way to operate this cellar. Thanks for your insights into this problem, they have been really helpful.
You have an insulation/unit size problem. I live in Chicagoland and have religiously monitored the run time of my unit - it runs ~50% longer in the summer than the winter - 15% to 25% of the day throughout the year. The only change is the temperature around the exterior of the cellar. Your unit can’t dump cold air fast enough to keep up with the heat transfer from the outside. It’s like your car’s a/c not being able to keep up when it’s 100* outside. Your unit should be plenty big enough for that size cellar.
Good news, you WILL see improvement as you fill that cellar up! But I wouldn’t let your contractor tell you that your space shouldn’t be able to hit a constant 55* if built properly. What type of insulation was used and to what depths?
Ben - here’s a link that you might find interesting. I’ve been to a lot of cellars in Europe and they’re not what we’d consider perfect. In Hungary, where it’s very mountainous, they literally bore holes into the mountainsides. In Spain they do that sometimes too.
I have a friend in France who has spent his whole life collecting wine and musical instruments from around the world. He keep them in an old farm building behind his house. It has stone walls that are about two feed thick - kind of cool construction - they lay two courses of stone with about a foot between them that they fill with small stones and pebbles. The barn dates from the 1600s. The temps do get warmer in the summer, but he’s kept wine in there for 40 years with no problems. Lots of other examples. My uncle in Napa went into his basement and chipped a section out of the rock his house was built on. He kept wine in there until he passed with no ill effects. That “cellar” was open on two sides to the rest of the area, which was not really underground although there was a floor over it.
Anyhow, I used to sweat it a lot more. Then I stopped worrying so much I’m drinking a 1999 Zin right now that was kept in my basement for years and has only been in serious storage for the past few years.
http://www.wineloverspage.com/wlp_archive/wineadvisor/tswa030519.html
From an anxiety standpoint, the best thing to do is chill out (pun intended) – your high temperatures are not all that high, and wine is surprisingly sturdy (surprising given the comments of some people on this board). In addition, as many have pointed out, the liquid in the bottle is changing temperature quite a bit more slowly, and probably less, than the air temperature. It’s possible that there are wines delicate enough to be affected by these temperature variations, but I would be surprised. Your solution of setting the temp a bit higher in the summer is a good one.
From a science/engineering standpoint, it sounds likely that you’re a bit shy on insulation, and probably on compressor capacity as well, as Chuck has pointed out. I have a cellar that’s similar in some ways to yours, particularly with respect to the wall that’s 80% below ground. One of the walls of my cellar faces southwest and, living in New Mexico (albeit at a cooler-than-the-rest-of-the-state 7000 feet), that 15-20% of the wall that’s above grade absorbs significant solar energy, I expect. The same may be true for you. It’s also exposed to the outside air’s 90-92 degrees (in your case), which may not cool down all that much in the evening. I originally had a cooler from WhisperKool that was bigger than rated for the space, but I eventually got one that was much bigger than required. It works less hard.
This is the kind of situation you live with and adjust to over time, making changes that you think will help. I added additional insulation on the interior of my walls – just big blocks of urethane foam. Seemed to help. I also had walls exposed to a crawl space, at least partially, and I think they contributed to my heat gain.
I have a specially made door with two panels of wood and insulation between them. It seems to do a really good job. I would recommend cutting a piece of insulation to cover the glass window in your door to use during the summer months. Unattractive, but it will save you some heat gain.
Keeping the warm side of the cooler at a lower temperature helps a lot. Mine ventilates into the aforementioned crawl space, and in the summer I run a whisper fan to suck air out of that space so it stays at a lower temperature. There is an absolute delta T that your cooling unit can attain, and the cooler the air it is breathing into, the cooler the output air will be.
Most of all – don’t worry! The results you’re having don’t sound bad at all, and over time you will make adjustments to make them a little less anxiety-provoking.