Jake, is your basement floor insulated? If not – and if everything else is well-insulated – you could probably do a pretty decent passive cellar in MN. But most foundation floors these days are insulated underneath, and in that case, you basically have a storage room.
If you want to explore inexpensive cooling options, do some searches for “Kenmore” on the board. Several members have done DIY modifications to inexpensive window a/c units to cool their cellars.
Definitely an interesting solution! So I could then just vent it out the back window?
Yes, or if you have an adjoining unfinished room in your basement, just into that room. Or, to get really ghetto, into your finished basement, and your cooling unit doubles as a heater! Assuming (since you’re in MN) that your basement would naturally stay in the 60s or below all year round without conditioning, this would be wicked energy-efficient.
Yep and yep. I am definitely not handy enough to do anything like this.
Do you have a suggestion for which window unit I should be looking at if I’m going to go the Kenmore route?
I’ve never tried it, but there’s plenty of advice in the other threads. One member in particular (I think it’s Paul Galli) has done it several times specifically with Kenmore units. AndrewH also has a great thread on building his own cellar, and he used a window a/c unit. Here’s a few threads that come up immediately:
http://www.wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1518350
http://www.wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1405837
http://www.wineberserkers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=584713
I wired mine 200 amp dedicated circuit.
200 amp!? your cellar must look like Berns!
For start ups, its what was recommended.
Only if it’s 3 phase.
What?? That’s crazy and not really likely to be actual. Entire small houses can run on 125 amps. You must be missing a decimal point. The wire after the breaker has to be sized to carry the breaker’s rating so it isn’t safe or allowable to use a high rated breaker on standard circuit wiring. That means the circuit till it’s end would have to wired in giant wire. Something like 2/0 wire.
You would never need more than a 30A circuit for a wine cellar cooling unit, whatever the type or room size. A condenser for a 2000 sqft house has a running load of less than 30Amps. We wire them for 50Amps to compensate for largest motor start-up load. Start-up load shouldn’t be more than 1.3 times running load. A large 12,000 btu window air-conditioner doesn’t run on more than 13amps, so a dedicated 20A circuit is fine, and a speciality wine cooling system doesn’t run on more than 15 amps. In reality, with good insulation, a room that size doesn’t even need a unit that large. So an existing circuit, assuming no other large loads might be fine. It’s always better to have a dedicated circuit if doable.
Jake, you should be fine going passive. It looks as though the room is all below level? We live in a bilevel just out of St. Cloud and the passive part of my cellar never gets above 67 and bottoms out in the mid 50s. The biggest concern would, to me, be the speed of the temp swing.
Craig lives in TX.
Also subgrade and passive in MN. I build double deep cabinets that are open to the bottom (they sit on the concrete floor) to trap the cool moisture within.
My passive in Milwaukee is pretty much exactly the same in terms of temp flux, gets closer to 50 in the winter though. It’s a great little cellar, hasn’t failed me yet.
My biggest concern would be blocking that window.
No, just make sure you design it to make it easy to add cooling. Figure out what system you might use before building.
I would not wall it off entirely. I would find a way to put a removable panel over it with insulation behind, just in case. Alternatively, knock it out entirely and put in cement block or whatever the foundation is made of.
IIRC, windows in basements are necessary for code compliance as a route of escape in case of fire. Not that it matters to you for a wine cellar, but I would think twice about doing something permanent. Removal of that window could become a major headache in a sale where the buyer doesn’t share your affinity for wine.
A window like that doesn’t satisfy the standard international building code requirements for an egress. Obviously, local code is what matters, but most municipalities have adopted one of the more recent versions of the uniform code.
In other words, check, but I doubt removing it or blocking it will be a code issue.
It’s a small split system, let me double check. It’s been a long day, it might be 20 amp