Digging up a basement for a wine cellar

WINE TALK
21

My buddy who is a general contractor is in the middle of a seven-figure remodel of a house in San Francisco, and they are adding a basement – not for wine, but just for added square footage. The permit process took forever and once they got started they ran into unexpected issues - pylons had to go much deeper than expected and a change to the structural plans had to be made. As a result, they had $100k budget overrun – just for the foundation.

I would think about building a ‘shed’ with 2x6 or even 2x8 stud walls in the back yard and over-insulate before I would dig under the house. The regular pitfalls of moisture control and freezing winters are a non-issue in So-Cal – you just need an oversized cooling unit.

22

Yes it will be costly. But right now I have units in the garage that work non-stop in the summer, so it
is not a long term solution. If I could convert a room into a WC then I would do it, but I don’t have one.

I also thought about splitting the garage and creating a room in there with a ducted AC. At least the AC
would not be warming the garage in the summer.

Offsite storage would also work, but It removes the fun of having access to the cellar when drinking
with friends. This is not a financial choice but a lifestyle choice:-)

Or I can just move :slight_smile:

Anyways, love hearing all your ideas/opinions about it, you guys are a great crowd.

Cheers,

JF

23

I did this. Created a 5’x8’ room in one corner of the garage. It worked really nicely. I could have easily made it larger if I had needed to.

24

If by ‘units’ in the garage you mean wine refrigerators working all the time in the summer, why not just extend your house’s A/C into the garage, or if there’s a window, install a mighty Kenmore to cool the garage down. To a slight degree, you are adding some redundancy at the same time. Regardless, I think you’d be crazy to excavate.

25

+1. I’d consider moving before excavating under a house to build a cellar.

26

Simple - just build a pool/party house (outbuilding) and build a basement/cellar under that. Then, let WB know when you want to have the first drink your cellar party.

27

Hiring a contractor, engineer, and getting all those permits and such will get pretty expensive. However, good news is I heard about a group based in Mexico that recently finished a large underground excavation job. They may be able to help out without all the legal hoops to jump through. Sorry, I don’t have their contact info, however.

28

To keep the excavating costs down, tear down the house first. [tease.gif]

29

I think this is the sober advice here. We thought about it when we remodeled, and the very preliminary quote was something like $75K, just to dig the basement.

If it’s a “cost is no object and it doesn’t need to make financial sense” kind of thing, I agree it would be really awesome to walk down to your basement cellar, have wine dinners down there, etc. But there is no way it comes anywhere close to making sense financially.

Plus, as someone else pointed out, if it’s just a basement and not a cave into a natural hillside or something, is it going to be that much cooler in the summertime in your basement than in your ground floor? Maybe 5 degrees or something?

30

I have a “California” basement for my water heater and it has a small storage area. My house is also on a raised foundation. When doing a remodel of my kitchen a number of years ago, I asked my contractor what it would take to excavate an additional 5 to 10 feet out of there. He laughed and said he wasn’t sure what would cost more, the excavation through the house or the structural reinforcements. He was joking in part, but it was clear to me at that point that there was no real possibility of digging out that space any farther.

31

One of these days his first floor will be in that basement [swoon.gif]

32

Basically what my contractor said when i remodeled the house and inquired about building a cellar. Between earthquake reinforcing stuff, permits, and actual costs he said go buy a new house with one already there as it would be cheaper.

33

man the house I used to rent on Del Mar/Lake had a huge basement. A good 18x15 at least. If I owned that place would have put in a wine cellar for sure

34

[video]- YouTube

35

If you are still thinking of moving forward with this then go talk to an engineer at your City Building Dept first. The meeting will likely save you a lot of time, trouble, and money. [wink.gif]

36

I have a house with a basement under most of it but wanted to use an excavated crawl space as a wine cellar instead, believing it would remain at a good temperature year-round. At first I just excavated a small portion that didn’t come close to structural walls, but later I made a much larger room. In order to keep from unloading the dirt around foundation walls I built a retaining wall as one side of the wine cellar, complete with rebar and grouted solid. An architect and structural engineer were involved, but that portion of the job wasn’t all that expensive. Your situation would be different.

The assumption that the cellar would stay at a good temperature year-round turned out to be incorrect. Winter was fine, obviously (we’re at 7000 feet, so it’s below freezing at night from November through March), but in the summer the temperature started out okay but, like many places, our summer temperatures began to rise, giving me 65 degrees or so for a few months. Not cool enough for very-long-term storage, for at least some wines. So I added a cooler that exhausts its heat into an un-excavated portion of the crawl space.

I think the option of using A/C in a portion of your garage will work the best, though regular A/C removes moisture from the air, which may be an issue for you. Air conditioning the entire garage won’t probably give you the cellar temperature you desire.

Good luck!

37

Thanks for sharing Larry. 65 degrees in the summer would not concern me in the slightest, even for long term storage, but opinions clearly vary on that subject. :slight_smile:

38

I think the key for me was to have an active cellar that vented outside. Basement was the only place I could do it, the garage traps the heat too much in summer, even if I am close to the ocean.

Obviously if I did take this project on I would plan to stay in the house for a long time.But now that I brought that up to the wife she wants a new house!

I am in trouble.

Cheers

JF

39

Resurrecting this thread for a related question. We were thinking about excavating a 120sqft crawl space that’s attached behind our unfinished basement, underneath a breakfast nook that juts out from the back corner of our house into the backyard. The quote was around $50k, was complicated by moving around a lot of ductwork and plumbing, moving the dirt in tiny batches, shaping perimeter dirt and building retaining walls for structural support, etc. I would have taken the over on that estimate. No dice.

I’m curious about digging behind our house rather than in/under it. Opposite the breakfast nook, behind the back-right of the house, is a crappy old patio full of cracked tiles and behind that is a nasty dirt/grass lawn that needs to be resodded. My thought is, a mini excavator could dig out a ~100sqft space behind the house in a couple days, then level the floor and pour concrete, cinderblock the walls, and build a door frame into the non-load-bearing wall at the back of the unfinished basement. Have a contractor do the heavy lifting and after that I could take my sweet time with things like masonry and racking. Uncomplicated by any water, electrical, gas, or power lines which are all by the crawl space.

This is probably the dumbest idea in the world, right? In principle it seems a lot simpler than option A and I wonder if it could be done for 60% of the price or less. There’s already basement there, so digging to that depth (in central VA) doesn’t seem like a big deal. But it’s what I don’t know that will probably make this a non-starter. Enlighten me please…

40

We did it in the 50’s, but as we are in coral rock SoFLA, we had to use dynamite back then !