From the monthly archives:

February 2010

Build a Wine Cellar to Help the Environment

by Basement Wine Cellar Guy on February 22, 2010

You want to build a basement wine cellar for the convenience, but you are reluctant to build it because it seems like an extravagance. Guess what: a home wine cellar is actually a green alternative! That’s right: building a basement wine cellar helps the environment!

Refrigerator Wine Coolers

Before I built my wine cellar, I had two wine coolers, or refrigerators. The motor to cool the units ran virtually none stop, just like happens with your kitchen refrigerator. Obviously they were using a lot of energy.

With my basement wine cellar cooling unit, the unit only runs for perhaps five minutes every hour, often less. Obviously one small unit running for five minutes per hour uses less energy than two refrigerators running none stop. Even better, my wine cellar can hold 1,200 bottles, as compared to under 300 for more two wine fridges. That’s an obvious energy saving.

Why the difference? I’m not an engineer, but I assume it’s due to the fact that, once the wine cellar reaches the optimal temperature, the 1,000 bottles store the coolness, which keeps the cellar cool. Also, the wine cellar has far better insulation than a wine refrigerator, which helps to maintain the temperature.

Other than great insulation, and keeping the door closed, I have two other energy saving tips.

First, keep your wine cellar full. The more wine you have, the more mass you have to retain the temperature. If you can’t fill your wine cellar with wine, store pop, beer, vegetables or anything else to help retain the heat.

Second, during the coldest days of winter, half fill plastic jugs with water, and leave them outside overnight to freeze. Then, bring them into your wine cellar during the day. They will absorb heat while they cool, which saves energy. In effect you are bringing the cold air from outside into your wine cellar. That’s free air conditioning, and that’s using winter to your advantage.

Tagged as: , ,

{ 0 comments }

Store Vegetables in Your Wine Cellar

by Basement Wine Cellar Guy on February 15, 2010

I know that a basement wine cellar is designed to store wine, but don’t stop there. You have a room that is both temperature and humidity controlled, so think for a minute: what else can you store in a wine cellar? If you are a gardener, the answer is simple: vegetables.

At the end of the year I harvested my potato crop, and I want to store them into the winter. What better place than a wine cellar?

Potatoes Stored in Wine Crate

Since this was my first year growing potatoes, I didn’t have a huge crop for storage, so I took the easy approach and took an old wine crate, and filled it with large potatoes. Next year when I have more potatoes I’ll get bigger containers, and store the potatoes in a crate filled with sand, or saw dust, or some other medium to retain moisture while keeping the potatoes separated.

I found that potatoes stored this way will easily keep for three months or more (after three months we had consumed them, so I don’t know how much longer they would have lasted). The same approach worked for carrots and kohlrabi as well.

So, when planning your wine cellar, be sure to select some wine cellar racks that will allow you to store vegetables for the winter. But here’s a tip: don’t store apples and potatoes in the same room; the apples give off a gas that makes potatoes germinate, so unless you want them to germinate, store them in separate rooms.

Tagged as:

{ 0 comments }

Wine Cellar Racking

February 1, 2010

The wine cellar cooling unit is installed, so the final construction step are the wine racks. You have three choices: build them yourself, buy a kit, or have them custom made and installed professionally. If you are an expert carpenter, you can build them yourself. You would need to build a jig, or template, for [...]

Read the full article →