One of the most ideal ways to preserve and store wines is building a home wine cellar in your basement. The
importance of learning how to build a wine cellar in your basement before starting to do anything cannot be overemphasized. If you plan first it will help you to avoid problems in wine cellar construction later on.
There are several things you have to take into consideration when building a wine cellar in your basement:
The capacity of wine cellar. Depending of the spare space you have in your basement, I would recommend you plan the largest cellar you can fit into and manage, because frequently wine cellars become too small for their owners’ needs.
Electricity. When you start planning how to build a wine cellar in your basement, don’t forget that your cellar will require lighting and preferably a cooling unit. Therefore, place the power outlet above the space for the cooling unit where it won’t interfere with wine bottle storage.
Cooling unit. Capacity of the wine cellar cooling units depends on the size of your wine cellar. Depending on the size and shape of your basement wine cellar, you may or may not have a lot of choice in where you will place the cooling unit. To dissipate heat away from the cooling unit you need to have sufficient ventilation, since most units are designed to exhaust into an open area.
Walls and ceiling. Use 2×4 or 2×6 lumber spaced 16 apart to build a wine cellar in your basement for constructing your basement wine cellar walls. Extruded polystyrene insulation or fiberglass is used as insulation in wine cellars. Ceiling will need insulation in the same manner as the cellar walls.
Floor. Basement cellar floor needs to be insulated also except if the floor is concrete. In that case you don’t need additional insulation.
Lighting. An important part of overall wine cellar ambiance is lighting. Low voltage track lights or recessed ceiling lights can work well in home wine cellars.
The best first step in „how to build a wine cellar in your basement” is to draw your wine cellar on graph paper.
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