Butcher's cooling system vs. Wine Guardian

[Jeffro]

Next week, I'm picking up a vintage, 1930's era walk-in cooler door to use in my conversion of an old root cellar to a wine cellar. The door was used in a butcher's shop and they are offering their split system cooling unit for an additional $250. The unit appears to have more than enough cooling capacity to keep 55 degrees in my 20x11x7 cellar. I'm tempted to give this setup a try and use the $4k difference between this and a Wine Guardian unit on stocking the cellar.

Does anyone see any significant problems or risks with giving the meat locker cooler a try in my wine cellar? Do other people do this? Thanks for any help you can give.

 

[Thig]

Just throwing this out there but what about the humudity level?

 

[Jeffro]

Thanks for your question about the humidity level. That brings me to another thing I am planning do do differently. The root cellar I'm converting is in an historic 1877 home in Austin, Tx with 7 ft stone walls (5 ft underground / 2 ft exposed to air but on the North side in shade) and brick floor. The stone and brick are original and beautiful. I have been using a $12 weather monitor from Home Depot to track the humidity in the cellar this spring and it has is almost always in the 90 range (low of 80, high of 99). The redneck engineer in me thinks the cellar will become even more humid when I eliminate the ventilation by installing the vapor barrier on the ceiling, crawl space and door, but leave the floors and walls as is, where vapor penetrates. I am anticipating the need for humidity reduction.

I'll look into the humidity control capabilities of the Wine Guardian type coolers. vs. commercial walk-in cooler systems. If you have any additional info on their effectiveness in my type of high humidity setting that would be awesome.

Thanks!

 

[Thig]

Sorry I am not able to answer your questions, the only reason I mentioned the humidity is that I once owned a restaurant and the walk-in cooler was always very humid but the food inventory turned over very fast so the humidity was not a problem.

 

[ibglowin]

"If" the $12 Home Depot weather meter is accurate at all you may think about picking up a room dehumidifier. You can actually dial in the humidity you want on the new models.

Post some pics please. Sounds neat!

 

[Arne]

Your evaporator (indoor part of the cooler) should have a drain on it. You will have to get rid of the condensate water somehow. If it runs enough, you should be able to get rid of the humidity with the cooler. If not you will probably wind up doing like Mike says and try a dehumidifier. Arne.