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.

You have two choices when it comes to your wine cellar door.

First, you could decide that you want your door to be a show-piece, much like the front door of your house. Your guests walk down to your basement, and from across the hall they see a beautiful door. Perhaps made of tempered glass, or perhaps a wooden door, inlaid with carvings of grapes, wines, or other scenes. People gasp at it’s beauty.

Your other choice is to do the exact opposite: make the door as un-glamorous and as un-assuming as possible. Do I want to advertise my wine cellar? If someone breaks into my house, do I want them to be drawn to a beautiful door, knowing what’s behind it?

Furthermore, is a beautiful glass door the most energy-efficient door? Will it keep the temperature constant? I think not.

Wine Cellar Door

As you can see from this wine cellar door picture, I choose to go for practical, and simple. This door is an exterior insulated door, the exact same door you might use as your back door, or even your front door, at your house. It’s insulated to keep the temperature constant, it’s very strong, in the event that someone wanted to break in, and it’s plain white and un-assuming.

A glass door makes no sense. Wine needs total darkness; this door accomplishes that objective. I don’t want the door to be the show-piece in my wine cellar. Go practical: go for a simple exterior insulated door.

Oh yes, it has the added advantage of being much less expensive than a ridiculously ornate show-piece door.

First, the floor supports the weight of your entire wine cellar collection, so it must be very strong. That’s an obvious reason why wine cellars are built in the basement; you have no worries about the floor collapsing under the weight of 1,000 bottles of wine.

Second, the ground cools in the winter and warms in the summer, so both cold and heat can be transmitted through the floor into the wine cellar if it isn’t properly insulated. You can read my post on wine cellar floor insulation to see how I insulated the floor.

Finally, you will actually see the floor, so it’s important to make it aesthetically pleasing. I have previously commented that it doesn’t really matter what the walls look like, since they will be covered with wine racks. Obviously the floor won’t be covered with anything, so it’s important that it is visually appealing.

We started by framing the floor and insulating it.

Then the floor studs are covered in 3/4 inch plywood for strength.

Then a wire mesh base is installed over the plywood, and the a “cement” base is installed over the mesh.

Then, the floor tile is installed.

As you can see from the picture we chose a dark slate type tile. It does have some texture, but it is flat enough that the wine racks won’t wobble when installed.

In my next post I’ll show you the finished product.

One school of thought is that this is an opportunity to add a distinctive flair to the wine cellar by using textured finishes and other fancy wall treatments. I am of the view that that’s silly.

I opted for the simplest solution of all: latex paint. I always use good quality paint, since I have no desire to ever need to repaint the walls again, but even if you buy the top of the line paint, to paint a wine cellar will cost less than $100, so get good paint and don’t worry about it.

As you can see by the picture, it’s painted walls in a neutral shade. I guarantee that this is the most boring picture on this web site, and that’s my point. It’s a painted wall. Nothing fancy, just a wall. Don’t over think it.

The main reason for not getting fancy on the walls is that no-one will ever see the walls. They will be covered with the wine racks, so don’t get fancy. Paint it, and forget it.

One final comment: even latex paint smells, and it needs time to dry. Since a wine cellar is a closed room, there is no place for the smell to go. So, once you have finished painting, use a fan to circulate the air, and keep the door open for a few days to dissipate the smell. Don’t plan on painting one day and installing your racks the next day.

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.

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.

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.

Here’s the floor after applying the 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:

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

There are many different opinions on the proper insulation technique. One school of thought says that you should install a vapor barrier (a plastic sheet) on the outer side of the wall, and then mount your fiberglass insulation, and then your walls. A vapor barrier is essential to keep moisture from forming in the wine cellar or behind the walls.

We decided to use a different approach: spray foam insulation. The insulation is applied as a liquid, and expands as a foam, and then hardens as a “solid”. Our contractor blew the the foam into place, smoothed it out, and let it harden.

This approach has a number of advantages.

First, it’s relatively quick. The entire job can be done easily in half a day. If you were to install a plastic vapor barrier, then cut and install fiberglass insulation, and fasten it into place, the job would take much longer. You may be able to simply push the fiberglass into place in the walls, but gravity won’t allow you to do that in the ceiling; fastening is necessary. With spray foam, it’s quick and it’s done. Here’s how it looks in the ceiling.

Second, since the foam dries hard, there is no need for a separate vapor barrier. Fiberglass insulation will retain water if it gets wet, so a vapor barrier is essential. With “solid” insulation, water cannot penetrate, so a separate vapor barrier is not necessary.

Finally, as you can see with the ceiling picture, foam is great for filling in every “nook and cranny” in a ceiling or wall with wires, pipes and other impediments. Fiberglass insulation will not fit as tightly.

Therefore, my vote is for spray foam insulation.

Framing is not necessary, since the floor joists that hold up the upper floor will serve as the area to attach the drywall, and to put the insulation.

As you can see from this picture, our house has various electrical wires, gas lines and plumbing running through the joists. It is necessary to review what’s there, and determine if anything needs to be moved before you proceed. In our case it was possible to frame around everything, so no major moving was necessary.

One final question to ask yourself: Will I ever need to access this area, or run additional wires? In the picture you can see four grey cables taped in a bundle; those are the cables from our television satellite dish. Once the ceiling is constructed, they will be inaccessible. If you think you will ever need to run wires through the ceiling in the future, you could consider running a conduit through the ceiling before you close it.

A conduit is simply empty plastic pipe, open at both ends, so that you can easily run wires through it. I suggest running rope from one end of the conduit to the other, so that you can pull your wires through it in the future. In our case it wasn’t necessary.

Framing and insulating the walls and ceiling is a good start, but if the wine cellar has as it’s base an uninsulated basement floor, the cold from the ground will gradually enter the wine cellar, so that the floor is much colder than the ceiling, and that’s not good. Obviously moisture can also enter from the ground. We framed the floor using the same method as used for framing the walls.

You may wonder why the wine cellars of 200 years ago could be constructed without the elaborate need for framing and insulation, including insulating the floor. Insulation would not be necessary if the wine cellar was built well below the frost line, where temperatures remain constant. In southern Ontario and the north eastern United States the ground may freeze to a depth of two or three feet in the winter, so the ceiling of an uninsulated wine cellar would need to be at least five feet underground, so the floor of the wine cellar would be 12 to 15 feet underground.

A typical basement in a typical house has windows at around ground level, so the floor of a typical basement may be only five or six feet underground, so most of the basement is at or near the frost line. If left uninsulated temperatures will vary considerably, and that’s not good. Therefore, insulation is essential, and to insulate, framing it a must.

Framing is a relatively straight forward task. A frame is built (we used 2 x 4′s) to serve two functions: it will hold the drywall, and it will hold the insulation. Here’s how the wall looks after framing:

You will notice that the framing is applied directly to the exterior basement wall. We have not installed any vapor barrier. More about that to in subsequent posts.

The existing interior wall is also framed (it already existed; we simply removed the existing drywall):