Wine Cellar page 1


	Wine Cellar December 2004
	Can't have a vineyard without a wine cellar. When I bought the house, there was a slightly dug out 12'x15' basement that wasn't good for much. Over the first couple years I slowly dug it back and terraced the dirt so I could use it for storage. I had even insulated it and dropped an AC unit it for a nice year-round 58F cave. But when I was forced to take 2 weeks off work for Xmas 2004, I decided to finally clean my act up.
		The 2" thick JM panels (R-12) cover up R-19 insulation. This has worked out real well all year round thanks to the large thermal mass of the pile of dirt in the room. The AC unit has to run for maybe an hour a day in the summer. The first step in making a respectable cellar was to finish off the digging I had started. I'd already pulled out around 4 yards in my initial terracing. This job called for another 5 yards to be excavated to leave a 6' x 15' pad for the floor. I was very excited to find the gas main coming right through the center of the room. You can see it in the lower left corner of the second picture.
		Now that the hard work is done, I'm able to get some help from my buddy Dave. We lay out 20" redwood squares for the floor.
		We were able to get the floor in with just a couple days effort half spent on Home Depot concrete runs. It's amazing how much weight a half ton truck can really carry... You can see a little magic in the second picture where we built a form around the PVC sleeved gas line.
		Our first big accomplishment was finishing off the concrete and moving on to the woodwork. Here we've just layed the sills and j-bolts for the upper wall.
		To maximize storage, a 2' deep pocket is going on the right side. This will be for bulk or case storage. Standard single bottle racking will go on the left wall and a counter will be straight ahead.
		Here's the pocket taking shape.
		The pocket is sheetrocked and all the wine that we had to put on the floor temporarily gets stowed safely out of harm's way.

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