I’m thinking about buying a Le Cache 5200 (~600 bottles) wine cabinet to be placed in living space off the family room. There are a few options for the Cellar Pro chiller unit in it. The quietest is the 1800QTL, rated to keep that size cabinet “closer to 60 than 55 degrees.” The 1800QT is 30% more powerful and 4 dB louder (45 vs 41 dB).
I’m fine with 60 degrees for storage and am leaning toward the smaller, quieter chiller, but I have no idea how loud either of those dB levels actually sound. Anyone out there with either the QTL or the QT Cellar Pro chiller who can offer advice on how noticeable it is in a quiet room, whether it intrudes on normal conversation or if you need to turn the TV up when it’s running?
It is pretty quiet but to be in a family room where you watch tv and hang out it would be annoying. Mine is in an office next to our kitchen and living room and never hear it at all but is a solid 20 feet away with partial blocking by a wall. If I was in the same room with it watching tv it would be a no go for me personally.
I know you didn’t ask about the 1800XT, but just in case you were considering it… it is not suitable for living spaces. Pretty loud. I have one and for about a year I had it in my living room. Had to turn it off when I was in the room in the evening. Not a big deal to turn it off for a few hours with 400 bottles in the cellar the mass kept it all cool. Now I have it in a room that is away from living areas and the noise is no issue.
I have a Le Cache 2400 with the QTL in our formal living room (not the room where we spend most of our time). It’s quiet enough that I generally don’t notice it if I’m not consciously thinking about it, but it’s a bit louder than I’d hoped. I can easily hear it two rooms away in the family room (no closed doors in between). It’s definitely louder than our main built-in fridge or under-counter wine cooler. It doesn’t bother me enough to do anything about it, but I wouldn’t want a louder one, and I probably wouldn’t want it in a room I spend a lot of time in.
BTW, regarding temperatures, this is what I have for the last 30 days with a sensor at the top and bottom of the cabinet. I don’t know how much I trust the accuracy of these sensors, so take it with a grain of salt…
Thanks. It sounds like the quietest model, the QTL, is the way to go. And place it further from the family room.
Sean, it’s interesting that your cellar is cooler at the top. Presumably because that is where the cooling unit is located. In my walk-in with two coolers mounted near the ceiling, it’s consistently 2-3 degrees cooler near the floor. The units run maybe 20-30 minutes a few times a day, so the cool air must have time to settle. Not that a few degrees makes a difference…
Yes, it’s definitely cooler near the cooling unit. I should probably experiment with the placement of that sensor. It’s not directly in the “line of fire” from the blower, but it’s not too far. Tonight I’ll put it on the other side of the top and see what it’s like.
I have a QTL and it’s a lot louder than our refrigerator. Ours is in a hallway off our living space, and I can hear it if I listen for it. I think we would find the noise annoying if the unit was in our family room.
I’m in the market too. I gotta say, the options really suck. Unless you do build-in or walk-in, the freestanding units are generally ugly, noisy, expensive and not well-built. I may just move my stuff to another off-site facility even if it is a solid 20 minutes away.
1800XT here in a 5200. It’s louder than I expected, though I have it in my home office (where I work during the day) and it is faint enough that I can make/take calls all day without it disturbing me or the person on the line.
We have Eurocaves in our family room and never notice when they’re running. There is a kick on sound but otherwise barely audible.
One thing I’ve noticed is that the le cache cellar, set to 55, cycles around 15-30min out of every hour and that’s using the XT model which is supposed to be more powerful. Eurocaves run on average 2-5 min ever hour with a 53 setting.
The Eurocave UK site says that most of those units are 37db. No info on how measured so maybe not a fair comparison, but it agrees with what you’re hearing.
I have a Cellarpro 1800QT in my cellar. It vents into a bathroom that is on the other side of the cellar, away from our TV room. No complaints at all about the unit, but I would not want it in the TV room. It would be too distracting.
Robert, there is nothing like the convenience of having the cellar at home. Ours is a basement walk-in and we never hear the cooler. But we’re planning to downsize to a single floor place and I really want to keep the wine on site.
Looks like the 1800QTL model will do the job and be quiet enough if I put it a few rooms away from the family room.
Just for comparison, here are the BTU and dB ratings for the various CellarPro 1800 units:
Model BTU dB
QTL 1065 41
QT 1380 45
XT 1465 47
XTS 1886 48
A 10 dB difference presumably sounds twice as loud? Someone with a scientific calculator handy that has a log function can tell us how much louder 4 or 6 or 7 dB difference sounds.
