From the monthly archives:

March 2009

Drywall or Green Board?

by Basement Wine Cellar Guy on March 27, 2009

After framing and insulating the wine cellar walls, the next step is installing the drywall, and that’s where the story gets interesting.

There is considerable debate over the materials to use for the walls. There are three obvious options:

First, use normal drywall. It’s inexpensive and readily available. However, it’s not a great material when their is moisture in a humid wine cellar. Of course the drywall is painted, and if the wine cellar is properly insulated and cooled there should not be water dripping down the walls, so normal drywall should be sufficient.

The second option is to use “green board”, which is the material used is damp environments, such as a bathroom or kitchen. It is resistant to moisture. More specifically, green board doesn’t encourage the growth of mold and mildew as you may find in standard drywall. On the down side, it’s more expensive than standard drywall.

The third option is to use a fiberglass based board, which is now used for areas like showers where you expect water to hit the walls. This is the most expensive option.

After much consideration, we decided to go with option #2, green board. It’s not that much more expensive than drywall, and it does offer some additional protection against mold and mildew. We decided that option #3 was overkill. In a properly insulated and cooled wine cellar there will not be excess humidity and moisture, so this should be the most cost effective solution.

drywall1

The interesting part, however, was that our contractor forgot the discussion about green board, and as you can see from the picture, he installed normal drywall. I didn’t notice this until the next morning, when I asked him about it.

He thought about it briefly, and told me that he didn’t think there would be a problem with the normal drywall. I agreed, but I said that I would prefer the green board option.

So, with no further discussion, he had his guys rip out the drywall and install the green board.

green board

Fortunately his guys are quick and efficient, so replacing the old with the new was a two hour task. I guess it helps if you know what you are doing (and fortunately only one round of tapping and mudding had been completed).

So, after some hiccups, I am now the proud owner of a green boarded basement wine cellar.

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Wine Cellar Floor Insulation

by Basement Wine Cellar Guy on March 20, 2009

In my last post I discussed spray foam insulation in the walls and ceiling. The same technique was used for the floor. Here’s what the floor looked like after framing but before the insulation was applied:

Framing Wine Cellar Floor

Here’s the floor after applying the insulation:

Floor Insulation

Yes, it looks just like the walls look. The foam insulation does dry solid, but it is full of tiny air pockets, so you don’t want to walk on it, since you will likely compress the air pockets and lower the insulation value. That’s why we applied the plywood floor as soon as possible:

floor plywood

Yes, this picture also shows the drywall on the walls, but that’s the subject of my next post.

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Spray Foam Insulation

March 13, 2009

Now that the framing is done, it’s time for the insulation. Insulation is critical, since the goal is to maintain a constant temperature in the basement wine cellar. The better the insulation, the less variation in temperature, and therefore the less effort required by the cooling unit to keep the wine cellar at a constant [...]

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Wine Cellar Ceiling

March 6, 2009

In my previous posts I discussed the framing of the wine cellar walls and framing the wine cellar floor, but I have not mentioned framing the ceiling. I have not mentioned it because in my construction I am converting a room in the basement, so there is already a ceiling (the floor of the [...]

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