Crawl Space wine cellar renovations

Been reading post on here for nearly a year and just want to say thanks for all the great threads!

I’ve got a passive cellar in our crawl space, pretty basic. Started about 1.5 year ago and it’s grown to around 400 bottles. Nothing to outrageous, probably in the $8000 range. Cellar holds temps pretty well on daily basis. Oct - Jun averages mid 50’s. July - Sept crept up to average of 63 and a high day of 69.

Anyway, getting ready to fix some insulation problems on the rim joists and had a question. We are planning on either having a contractor come and spray foam the rim joist, or take on a diy foam board with some expanding foam as well.

Should I be worried about the “off gassing” the expanding foam or spray foam might do for a few days?? Not that I couldn’t move all the wines out, but what a pain in the *$?. On the other hand, don’t want to get to my 2000 Musar, 168th Krug, 2012 Pertimali BdM reserva or any others…in the next 10-20 yrs and taste my insulation project of '22.

Thanks for the tips

With the proviso that I know nothing about this whatsoever, I wouldn’t want any crap like that sprayed within a country mile of wines which I cared about.

Can you get some pink Owens Corning and just shove it into the holes by hand [like a kid at the circus shoving cotton candy into his mouth]?
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.Personally I would wear gloves & an N95 over my face, but lots of dudes do it with their bare hands and bare noses/mouths.

Me, though, I don’t like going down into the crawl space period without an N95.

Although this is the best time of year to venture down into the crawl space, because all the poisonous snakes are either hibernating or very sluggish.

If you’re really worried about off-gassing, the solution is ventilation or air flow. Can your crawl space be somehow temporarily ventilated to the outdoors during the project? And circulation enhanced with a fan during this time?

Without seeing a picture, I would default to removing the wine. Not worth the risk. Also, seems like it would get in the way, which may also be a pain if you go the DIY route.

On a non-wine related note: If you have a termite bond, or termites in your area, then I would make sure you read your contract as many do not allow for spray foam and that could void your bond. The termite companies claims the foam keeps them from seeing the tubes and it is very hard to get a bond with foam under the house. It has been a major issue in my area, south Alabama.

+1 to this.

Though if you’re dealing with spray foam, it makes a mess, so you’re going to need to at least cover bottles.

BTW, if you have 400 bottles worth $8000, it sounds like many of your bottles are <$20, in which case you could remove the gems and leave the daily drinkers and likely not have to worry at all.