New home construction wine cellar

I am curious if anyone on this board has experience building a small wine cellar into a new construction home and whether it is more cost efficient or the same as adding one to an existing home. I would want the capacity to be somewhere in the 400 bottle range and nothing more than the size of a small closet.

We are in the situation where a Eurocave would be more than sufficient but want to add a cellar in next 5 years or so. At the same time, we are looking at some new construction homes where we could modify the plans if we wanted. If the cost is significantly cheaper to add insulation and cooling in new versus adding later, we would consider doing it now. But if the costs are relatively similar, we would just as soon wait and plan on converting a space or closet in the future.

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

Much cheaper to do up front. You don’t even have to do everything up front - have them frame (contemplating your cooling solution), spray foam, run the electricity and hang an exterior quality door now. If you are doing a split system/ducted system, have that ducting run now and contemplate where the unit will go. Just be very specific with your contractor. If a general home builder, they won’t really know the importance of spray foam/vapor barrier, not using an interior door, understand your cooling solution, etc.

You can add the actual racking and/or cooling equipment later.

I agree with Les. I bought the racks and the cooling unit, and the builder didn’t charge us anything for building the wine cellar (the labor and materials cost to him is just the same as building what would have been a basement storage closet). They insulated when the spray foam guy was there doing the exterior walls and just had to put an exterior door on instead of an interior. Doing it as part of framing when you are building is definitely the cost efficient way to go (and saves a headache down the road).

I built my current home. Original plans included a second kitchen for B&B use, but I changed my mind and decided to not do a B&B, then got the vino bug. Converted this small, 8X8 space into a cellar. It was kind of a PITA to convert, as I had to demo sheet rock, add insulation, fur out the walls and floor to accommodate more insulation, etc, etc… Then I had to use a “through the wall” cooling unit with limited room over the door. It originally held about 800 bottles, and I thought that would be plenty. Then I had to build more racks, a rolling shelf for more, then I bought a free standing cooler… Now I’m out of room again with about 1500 bottles in the house. Long story short, plan and build the house with a cellar, and build the cellar to hold 3X the amount you think you’ll need. No, make that 4X what you think you will need.

I’m currently designing my next house. It will have a 2000 bottle cellar. And - no more double deep bins.

I cannot speak to the cost of renovating an existing room, however I assume depending upon it’s location, the cost could vary greatly. We just built a new house that was finished last summer and during the building process, we included the cellar in the house plans. I have it located off the bar in the back of the house. This was a good location due to it’s proximity to the bar with two of the walls below grade (house is a walk-out) and the other wall is between the cellar and the utility room where we can vent the cooling unit. While not everything was line itemed in the myriad of invoices from our contractor/sub-contractors, I do not believe the room itself added much cost. As we’re in a northern climate (South Dakota), we already needed to sufficiently insulate the two outside facing walls of the cellar. Our builder routinely uses closed-cell foam for part of the insulation already so we just had to add closed cell to the two interior walls and the ceiling. Obviously the exterior grade door was an upcharge but most everything else probably had little if any additional cost. The greatest expense was the cooling unit (CellarPro 4200). The cellar is approximately 8’ X 9’ with 9’ ceilings. I have not yet purchased the nicer wood racking, still getting by with some metal racking, though I’m rapidly running out of room. Plan to use as much double deep racking as I can and should be able to accommodate around 2000 bottles. It’s a work in progress but the hard part is done and we’re really happy with it.

As others have said, doing it early in a new build is going to be cheaper and easier than trying to retrofit. In fact retrofitting in many cases gets very complicated and expensive fast. Many existing homes simply don’t have a decent setup to retrofit for a proper cellar. You’ve got issues of insulation, plumbing, humidity, and noise all to factor into a retrofit. You can of course plan early and do the work in stages.

Agreed, do it now. And make it twice as large as you thing you will need, you’ll thank me later.

Whole heartedly agree with building it bigger than you would imagine. Two or three times.

As others say, do it now. Nothing is cheaper as a retrofit- it’s just a question of how much more expensive.

Other than wine, the racking is the most expensive part, the cooling next. As noted you can do that later. You can even design it to be basically a walk-in closet if you ultimately don’t want a cellar or go the Eurocave route. Having insulation for a closet won’t matter - you’ve wasted maybe a few $$ of extra insulation.

One thing you should do is at least talk to some type of cellar designer just so you build it in a way that will work. In particular, a typical closet may be wide enough only for racking on one side, and even then with relatively awkward access. A designer can tell you the minimum width you’d want (I’d say 5 feet, which gives you a rack on each side and 3 feet to stand/bend over in) and also how much height/depth for the bottle count you want, and finally where to locate the cooling. You can do it in a fairly preliminary way, but better to do it before rather then retrofit. Unless the builder has this expertise I’d talk to someone specific.

It took me a long to realize that for the kinds of folks who swallow Grand Cru Burgundy on a regular basis, a house is just another disposable asset [and I imagine they don’t stay in any one particular house for much more than five or ten years].

But if you’re a Normie, and if you’re building your “Forever House”, then build your wine cellar with EXTERIOR GRADE components: Pressure treated wood, double-dipped galvanized and/or stainless steel fasteners, hardipanel, etc etc etc.

Introducing significant temperature & humidity differentials within your house is simply laying down a “Welcome!” mat for mold & mildew & rot [& termites & ants & cockroaches & silverfish & cetera].

So if you’re a Normie, and if this is your “Forever House”, then build it right the first time.

OTOH, if you’re a billionaire, then none of this would matter to you - you’d just sell the rotten house to the next chump in line waiting to be screwed.

Richard Gold: How and Why to Build a Wine Cellar Still valuable.

I just finished converting a 9 x 5 closet to a cellar. I would say the only two things that I wish had been already in place was spray foam insulation and tile (carpet was in there). As others have noted, the big costs in a cellar are racking and cooling, neither of which influences a home build. However, it’s also expensive to tear down dry wall, install spray foam, then put up new dry wall (my third biggest expense; about $2.5k for my space). So, assuming you are going to put the cellar in an area where it could be useful as a closet for the 5 years before you convert it (assuming you want a closet), then I would have the area framed, spray foam used for insulation, and the floor tiled so that you can use it as a closet for now and it will be easily convertible later.

This part I might not do (the rest is in line with what I suggested). Why? You may not want a tile floor. Wood or engineered wood may be preferable. I used engineered cork flooring. I haven’t dropped a bottle yet, but I like its chances on the cork versus tile.

If I were doing all the other parts, but taking the “wait and see” approach on racking/cooling, I’d leave the subfloor and use the same carpeting you have in the adjacent areas. A few extra square feet won’t cost much. If you’re using hardwood floor, you might even do that - or stay with the subfloor and add carpet to that.

BTW, make sure you insulate under the subfloor too! (And the ceiling as well)

Like above poster, I would leave the floor as is until you decide what to do. I’ve always put cellars in a basements on concrete slab and just left them as is or epoxy painted them. Toss in a few rugs to help with breakage and looks. You do NOT want to add insulation in that situation as the slab is a source of cooling. If you are upstairs and not on slab, yeah I’d add insulation if relatively straightforward. A raw wood subfloor is going to need treatment for moisture. Always shoot for the concrete subfloor and North side of the house and deeper the better. A south side location when the sun hits just adds to heat issues. All can above addressed but for sure before construction way easier than after.

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My home has radiant floor heat, so when I converted the small room into a cellar, I had no choice but build a floor on existing slab floor. I just used 2X6" lunber, stuffed with blue board insulation, then tiled over it with some cellar’ish looking slate tile. So - it can be done, and can be removed later if needed.

I am a hobiest wood worker. I built my own racks. I used alder. Bought some S2S boards, then machined them down to size for the verticals and horizontal slats. It was tedious, but not all that difficult. Couple hundred bucks for the wood, verse a few thousand for built racks.

Michael, Funny you mention radiant heat. I am remodeling a ski place while downsizing dramatically as the kids flee the nest for college. So I may be done with full on cellars and am getting a wine cabinet for the ski place. It will sit on a soon to be radiant floor and as I wrote my previous post wondered if I need to do anything special. Prob not given it is basically a fridge.

Your case is indeed special and needed special attention. BTW Alder is usually our goto wood for various things as I like the grain, it is reasonably cost effective, and easy to work with.

Hi John S. In addition to my little “cellar”, I have several stand alone wine coolers (which is why I suggested sizing the cellar 3 or 4 times the size the OP thinks he needs). One of the coolers is a 250 btl unit with a cooling unit at the top. It just stands on the floor, nothing under it. It seems to hold temp just fine, despite the woefully pathetic construction (1" foam sandwiched between 1/4" ply). The other units are those cheap 50 btl units you find at Home Depot. I built cabinets for those, and used cherry ply and 4 quarter boards, to make them look a bit better in the house. They too, have worked fine and keep a constant temp. I supose one could build a pad to set on the floor, just large enough to support the cooler…Certainally would not hurt. Maybe sandwich 4" of blue board between some 1/2" plywood, wrap the perimiter in 3/4?

The alder, IMHO is a perfect wood for cellars. Totally under rated. Like you said, easy to work with, not expensive, and it’s resistive to moisture (like red woods), it has a nice red’ish color to it, and it’s not a ‘soft’ wood.

Thank you to everyone who has responded. This has been hugely helpful!!!