Building a cellar

[speck]

Hi All,
Its my first post here, hopefully I can get some advice. Excuse the length of this post, I tend to over-explain myself.
Basically, I have been paying for wine storage for a while but the expense is starting to bother me, especially given I have a brick garage (of which the rear portion is essentially underground) I also have a spare pellet of new bricks and some industrial fans. The floor AND the roof are concrete.
I will be building two double brick walls, lining them with 75mm Extruded Polystyrene (from what I understand this is higher density) I plan to lay a base of bricks, then have a cavity upon which a wire mesh shall form the base. The racks are hexagonal terracotta tubes which stack in a honeycomb type fashion. The reason for the cavity below is I plan to have an intake fan into a drilled PVC pipe which will disseminate the air, and at the top of the opposing wall an outlet fan will blow that air out of the garage. I figure that will create a good airflow from the bottom all the way up through the cabinet. I am going to run the fans off a thermostat controlled fan regulator that I have found can be bought at a hydroponic store. I will set the thing at 14 degrees and am hoping that it will regulate the fans accordingly.

There are some more intricacies but I can hear those of you that are still reading yawning, so I will move to the questions.

1/ Is this type of passive temp regulation possible? I cannot afford expensive refrigeration units.
2/ Im always wondering - what about when the temp goes too cold, don't we potentially need heating to maintain a stable temp?
3/ The roof is a solid concrete slab, but it is dark brown on top and received direct sun. It holds that heat and affects the temp in the shed. Should I build low and wide rather than tall and narrow?

I tried to do a diagram in google sketchup but I think by the time I finish that I could have built two cellars...

[bacchaebabe]

Firstly welcome. I love a wordy post.

Secondly, where are you located and what are the general summer and winter max and mins. Obviously everywhere occasionally gets those 40 degree days but Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra have very different winter temps.

Have you thought about firstly buying a max and min thermometer and sticking it up the back of your garage so you know what you're dealing with on a daily basis to begin with and then on a seasonal basis. Daily variation is your biggest enemy so if you can get a measure of that, it would be good. Places like dick smith sell them and they are only about $25

You say you can't afford refrigeration but that might only be the case now so don't build something that you can't retrofit later when you may want to do it.

[Paullie]

If you live in Australia, then I doubt you will have an ambient air temperature to support even a 16degC fan control. Basically if you set your fan to come on at 14degC, it will hardly come on, especially when you really need to cool down the cellar, in summer.

[speck]

Thankyou both.

I am in Melbourne. I do have a Min/Max Thermometer/Hygrometer, currently its in a 40 bottle (totally inadequate) wine refrigerator I purchased. I will put it in my garage definitely. So far it has revealed this fridge to have a temperature variance of around 4 degrees in a 24hr period! I bought two of them - the joys of being a novice. I am also thinking of buying one of these USB temperature/humidity loggers I recently found, if not for this purpose then to put into my commercial storage to ensure they are in fact providing a stable temperature.

Paullie - Im not sure I follow. Are you saying if I set the thermostat to 14degC it will never come on? Surely in summer it would.

I don't know the rules on this forum but here is a link to a product I am planning to enquire about -
http://www.domegarden.com.au/environmen ... ermostats/
and a perhaps more suitable example but in UK Voltage...
http://www.nehydro.net/index.php?main_p ... cts_id=701

Finally, could anyone answer question 2 in my original post. I see so much written emphasis on the importance of maintaining stable temp above all else, yet the products seem to be capable of refrigeration only.

Thanks Again.

[TiggerK]

Not an expert, but I imagine if you have sufficient insulation, then the thermal inertia of a lot of bottles will be high so that it will at least minimise the effect of larger variations outside. But it's still going to result in variations in temp, no matter what. I suppose the idea is to minimise them, (obviously). So a 10C drop overnight, might only result in a 2 or 3C drop in the cellar, and likely to be even less for the actual wine in the bottles. It's the sustained heat over summer you really need to worry about. NIghts at 18 and days at 30-35 are not going to be good at all without adequate cooling. And of course the humidity is an important factor (although not so much for screwcaps).

Tyson Stelzer has a good little technical book called Cellar, well worth hunting down.

Chers
TiggerK

[sparky]

No expert neither, but I've got a double brick ambient cellar in Melbourne (otherwise known as a 30's vintage semi on stumps), and I reckon it works pretty well. Haven't had a bottle yet that has shown an signs of heat stress, and most have been cellared for 10-15 years plus. I reckon your plan is sounding pretty good - I'd almost suggest doing the double brick insulated bit first and seeing if you really need the fan assisted bit - use less electricity, reduce global warming and you won't need them anyway:-). Plus you'll save money on bills that you can spend on wine!

Have you thought about painting the roof to reduce heat variation? There are solar paints around that claim to do pretty good things for temperature reduction - google 'solar roof paint' and you'll find a few.

[Paullie]

Hi Speck

I'l answer your question with another question. When you cellar is at 20degC initially, how do you propose to remove the heat?

Paul

[sparky]

Well if s/he gets cracking and builds it this weekend, it shouldn't be a problem!

[speck]

Hi all,
Thanks for the responses.

I guess I felt that with the constant movement of air the temperature would be better regulated, but considering the air temp external to the cellar is more likely to reach unwanted extremes I could be seriously mistaken, and in fact make things worse.

Now I begin to think that as little airflow as possible is a better approach, and wonder why I ever thought otherwise. Instead, perhaps I will simply use more bricks to create a greater thermal mass that is hopefully more resistant to temperature changes.

I’m glad I posted here before rushing out and investing in fancy gadgetry – thankyou. I’ll get stuck into it this weekend and let you know how I go.

[Paullie]

Some airflow is good to reduce stagnation on prevent mold buildup. I have an exhaust fan run on for 5 minutes a day at the coolest time of the day for this.

[richard]

Regarding the concrete roof, It should be quite simple to build a frame for a corrugated iron roof and then use white colorbond iron and the usual roof insulation of batts and sisulation to reduce the effect of the sun on the concrete

[speck]

Greetings all...I have made limited progress on this, although I have done the brickwork. Double brick walls and a single brick base on the concrete floor. The biggest delay has been finding time to go to Moorabbin to get the polystyrene I am after, and at $78 a sheet, well, lets just say buying wine has taken precedence.

Today was 28%, the ambient temp outside my cellar/storage cabinet in the garage was 22%. I currently have a plasterboard roof and door, and I've out approx 20 bottles inside, interspersed with 'empties' filled with water. The temp inside is 15.1deg. The daily min (since yesterday) is 13.6deg. Not too bad considering, but I am nervous about hot weather. Im just in two minds about whether to keep going or to just move it all down to my commercial storage. I like the idea of keeping one bottle of each of my collection at home.

I have two 40 bottle wine fridges, but they're crap and the temp fluctuates more than in the cellar - however it never gets above say 15deg. I know temp fluctuation is the thing to avoid, but for my on hand drinkers perhaps temp fluctuation within a low temperature range (say 11-14deg) is acceptable? As in, no heat stress will be prevalent, perhaps only reduced development? Any advice?