Today (Saturday) I spent 14.5 hrs working on my 500 - 600 sq ft wine cellar (also beer cellar), and more time the past couple days. I previously had insulated in the heating/AC ductwork in the basement cellar (radiating residual heat or cold passing through the ducts towards the cellar), thinking it would help warm the cellar in winter and cool it in summer. It worked fair to support the passive cool in the summer, but I needed consistent temp and humidity, and in winter humidity dropped fast, and in summer the passive cooling temp sometimes fluctuated a few degrees between night and day.
Thursday evening I added a small cheap plywood inside wall section where previously there was only studs, pink insulation and biskween vapor barrier, and then I cut a pattern hole to fit the new self-contained, through-the-wall wine cellar cooling unit I recently purchased.
Friday morning an electrician came over and put in an electrical outlet in the wine cellar and ran the dedicated line to the electric panel.
Saturday i moved the pink insulation from behind all the ductwork, since the new idea is to push the heat or cool that passes through the ducts to the floor above, and NOT into the wine cellar. For the cylindrical ductwork I just moved the pink insulation to in front of the ducts, and retaped the vapor barrier, Next, I cut and placed rigid foam insulation to cover HVAC hubs, and also outside the main duct that runs through the cellar. To hold the rigid insulation in place I concocted an idea that actually worked very well to attach it to the frame pieces. That is, to insulate over the sides of the ductwork I drilled a top and a bottom hole in each of the lateral 1x2 pieces that hang down nailed into floor joists, and through which I put pieces of tie-off wire. I poked the wire through the rigid insulation in 2 places per hole to the outside, and then twisted together the two wire ends to cinch the rigid insulation pieces snugly in place up to the ceiling and against the wood 1x2 frame pieces. Then I clipped the wire ends and taped over the remaining wire twists so it wouldn't poke through vapor barrier when I added that. Then I cut and taped on pieces of the rigid insulation to cover the bottom side under the duct. This way I left some airspace in between the rigid insulation and the ducts, just as an additional safety against smoke or fire, although probzbly unnecessary. Then I taped on vapor barrier over the framed in ductwork, and taped all the seams with heavy duty waterproof duct tape to lock in temp and humidity inside the cellar.
Then I installed the wine cellar cooling unit. Long day, but it came out well enough for my needs.
I needed to get my bulk maturing wine back in there and cooled down again before it got too warm and expanded too much, causing problems.
The top tape line is butt ugly - I was past tired by then, and it's a scrabble taping plastic to plastic on a non-flat surface at an angle.
Topic: What's the brewing community doing this weekend?! (Read 4025 times)
