Cooling Unit for new cellar

[justinb]

I'm in the process of building a new house. I keep hinging between open rack storage with a few wine fridges for our best bottles vs a full on cellar. The idea of a devoted cellar sounds great, but its also a lot more expensive than wine fridges. I can buy 2 fridges for a couple thousand.

Are there any other options for cooling besides an exterior evaporator unit? This will be in a finished basement so hanging a wall unit isn't an option for me. I live in Northern Illinois so summers aren't horribly hot. We will be putting radiant floor heat in the basement so I would need to segregate the concrete floors before they'r poured. I don't want to have the proposed cellar floor to have floor heat. Any thoughts? Currently, my collection is next to nothing as our house burned this spring. I do hope to start making wine again soon and we buy quite a bit as well.

 

[mainshipfred]

Sorry to hear about your house but if there is a bright side you get to start from scratch with your wine cellar. Great planning to isolate the slab even if you're not sure which way you are going. A piece of 2" rigid should do the trick. If you bury it far enough, maybe a foot below the ground you should be good. Otherwise I would recommend lowering the stone in that area and place 2" rigid there as well. I'm sure I don't have to tell you that wine refrigerators fill up pretty quickly especially if you are buying and making wine. That $2,000.00 may grow to $4,000.00+ pretty quickly making the cellar sound more economical. Also if you weren't doing radiant heating your basement would stay at a reasonable temp for wine storage. But at a comfortable room temp it's not ideal. That's about all I have to offer so have fun and good luck.

 

[meadmaker1]

Your floor will have several separate loops to cover the floor. decide on the location and have them loop that area with isolation valves, this will allow you to turn it off or on at will.
A through the wall unit can easily be hidden behind a beautiful wine rack
Many of the cooling units designed for this purpose are through wall or ceiling mount

 

[justinb]

A through the wall unit would be the easiest option. I just dont know how to incorporate the exhaust side. The proposed cellar will be adjacent to a main living area and a media room. Wont that be noisy? Ive never seen one in person, but Im envisioning them to operate like a windown unit ac

 

[sour_grapes]

A through the wall unit would be the easiest option. I just dont know how to incorporate the exhaust side. The proposed cellar will be adjacent to a main living area and a media room. Wont that be noisy? Ive never seen one in person, but Im envisioning them to operate like a windown unit ac

Google "mini-split AC system." The experts will have more to say later!