Hole is dug for our new wine cellar

Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum

Help Support Winemaking Talk - Winemaking Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
They tarred the roof and all sides today and put plastic over same. Installed door. They are placing drain pipe around the outside perimeter as I type. It was in the low 80's here today and the thermometer inside has stayed at 69 degrees all day today.
 
Squeaky wheel (me) gets the grease. Lots of progress today.
Supposed to get heavy rain tonight.

In the last photo you can see our greenhouse.

cellar11.jpg

cellar12.jpg

cellar13.jpg
 
Sammyk said:
They tarred the roof and all sides today and put plastic over same. Installed door. They are placing drain pipe around the outside perimeter as I type. It was in the low 80's here today and the thermometer inside has stayed at 69 degrees all day today.

Sammy, keep us posted throughout the summer on how the temp inside your cellar hold up.
 
Sammyk said:
Squeaky wheel (me) gets the grease. Lots of progress today.
Supposed to get heavy rain tonight.

In the last photo you can see our greenhouse.

I'd assume your cellar is done by now. Any updates?
 
Final photo of our wine cellar. All that is left is to get the area planted again. We did plant the "top" with a vine that will spread all over the hill and down the front. Temperature is holding around 64 even though we were over 80 degrees yesterday.
In the fall when it is cooler, we will stucco the railroad ties that were used to hold the dirt in place. We received very heavy rain (4 inches) and the dirt all held!

15.jpg
 
Last edited:
Very nice indeed. I am suppressing deep envy. I wish I could do something like this. I hope you get a lot of good use out of that!
 
In the event of an "attack" we will sell admission tickets. LOL!

From the street side it just looks like a pile of dirt bigger and taller than what was already there. I can live with the low to mid 60 degrees. There was no other way to build and get a steel door in the front for access.
Neighbor had the canvas tarp in his shed and even helped put it up. Just to shade the front side which faces south.

My brother will be here from FL tonight and we are anxious for him to see it. Perhaps he will help us put the cases of wine on the Sam's Club racks. Have one more rack in the box to be put together.
 
Looks very nice! Is it full yet, maybe need to put on an addition? :b
 
very cool!! What does the inside look like. How much do you think it will hold. Is it full of racks?
 
Sammyk said:
In the event of an "attack" we will sell admission tickets. LOL!

From the street side it just looks like a pile of dirt bigger and taller than what was already there. I can live with the low to mid 60 degrees. There was no other way to build and get a steel door in the front for access.
Neighbor had the canvas tarp in his shed and even helped put it up. Just to shade the front side which faces south.

My brother will be here from FL tonight and we are anxious for him to see it. Perhaps he will help us put the cases of wine on the Sam's Club racks. Have one more rack in the box to be put together.

Plant a shade tree on the south side.
 
Not finished inside and no plans to finish it. Just block wall, cement floor with a drain. Simple light fixture and an outlet inside, nothing fancy inside. Right now it has 3 full wine racks (168 bottles each) and the 4th will be full once we get the other wine rack put together. Will have to buy another wine rack soon. We will also use it for empty wine bottles and for aging wine. We have 50 gallons waiting to be bottled but held off until the cellar was finished.

We do plan to plant 2 shade trees one either side of the hill in the front. Just need to find the time.

It was 87 here today and temp held at 65 all day. Humidity was 80% so we are running a dehumidifier.
Brother arrived from FL tonight and he was impressed. He said it was all quality work. AND he is very picky having built his own home.
 
Too bad you got the racks in already. I would have suggested painting the walls with something like dry lock and staining the floor with a good concrete stain like Behr has.
 
We had to get the wine out of the house because it is in the upper 80's here and we don't run air conditioning here. He took so damn long getting it done that we had no choice but to move all the wine down there. My criteria was it had to be finished before we hit 70 degrees, usually March. The door still needs to be caulked and he has been putting that off for over 2 weeks as it is.

Lesson learned! Never hire a contractor because they get a deposit and work at their leisure taking on and starting other jobs. I mean come on, he said it was a 4 or 5 day job and we gave him a deposit back in February. Every week it was "it will be finished by the end of the week". Guess we should have asked what week he meant.
 
Bad part is he lost another job because our next door neighbor is putting on an addition to their home and they went with someone else. Their addition is almost done in just about 2 weeks time.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top