Well of course they are, it’s your property.
Can you elaborate more on what you hope to have and to do in the room besides storing wine?
I love the idea of sitting and tasting surrounded by walls full of wine bottles, but if you’re going to be keeping the room air conditioned at 60 degrees or below, it’s not really going to be comfortable to do that. If you’re opening and decanting bottles in there for serving, are you going to be walking back and forth through the back yard every time you want to refill a glass?
More realistically, it seems you might (1) want to be able to show a visitor around to see your collection, and (2) have a comfortable place to manage the work of a wine collection (opening boxes, doing inventory, looking around for things). Those things make sense and seem attainable.
I guess the point of my questions (which hopefully are not too intrusive) is to focus on what you really want to have and really expect to do with the space, so that you can make your plans around that.
Yes, the latter - won’t be spending lots of time in there drinking wine, as it would be much more enjoyable in the house 
Have you been to my house? (Can’t remember if you’ve attended one of my events at this house but I think so) - if yes, do you remember this casita?
You could build a fake insert for the windows on the inside backed by insulation (maybe a tile mosaic of the Italian countryside or similarly decorative). That way it looks nice from the outside and lets you put up a false wall on the inside. Some heavy curtains draped over some Thermax would add R-value to the window and then be nicer looking on the inside. That’s the only way I can think of to keep the windows and keep out the UV / solar heat load.
Inside, the insulation will not only determine how much money you throw at the cooling unit every year, but also get the cooling requirements into the unit’s sweet spot. You can go overboard, though. If you run it too cool, the unit will run all the time and burn out. If you over-insulate, then the load is low and the coils can freeze up as the cycle starts. These are extreme examples, but they do happen when HVAC units are under or oversized.
If it’s just a bit oversized, then you might be able to get 60F no problem with just taking care of the door and window. Humidity will be an issue since cooling units are very good at dehumidifying. Sadly that’s why the special wine cellar units are so expensive – it’s a different optimization and design of the cooling cycles to cool and keep humidity up.
If you air conditioned it to 70 they probably wouldn’t put out that much heat. I think building a dedicated cellar room is fine but i think even if you DIY a lot of it it’s still going to cost tens of thousands of dollars. This option would be much cheaper, but still cool. If you’re not going to really hang out in there then it’s a different story.
Agreed. You could probably buy a couple of big, nice units for what it would cost to do the room + racks, etc. You don’t need to worry about the exhaust from the units, just using the room AC to keep it under, say, 75, would do the trick. Do consider the long term cost of electricity (though I guess that’s a non-issue if you’re powering this with solar). This way you’re also fairly well protected against an AC failure: if a cooling unit fails, the room keeps things fine for a while. If the outside AC fails, the units will do OK even on the hottest day. Frankly, even with a dedicated room, I might continue to maintain a couple of shelves in a professional locker facility for my most valuable and long term wines, that way you don’t have to worry about theft either.
What about a room inside a room? In other words… a sitting area as you enter so you do not have to mess with the windows and doors. Say about 4X11. Then you can have a non weight bearing green rocked in wall with a door leading to about a 7X11 cellar. You would lose very little space as you still have 4 walls. Might even gain some storage with lack of windows. Floors look perfect so no need to mess with those. I didn’t see any windows in back so no issues. I have built 2 wine cellars (or well my builders did)… my quick recommendations.
- Have someone do the racks onsite and fasten to said walls. Might cost you more… but you live in a weather diverse place (e.g. earthquakes)
- See if you can do a very small pitch front to back on said racks given the chance of earthquake
- See if you can put a drain in for spills and cleaning
- AC will dry out corks and all… you need humidity in there somehow. But when you do… the sheet rock isnt sufficient. You need green rock.
- Have some sort of serving area to stand up bottles… decant… etc
- This is personal… But I hate… hate… hate diamond racks.
Sure I am missing a ton of things. But i think the room inside a room would be pretty cool.
More I think about it, I like the room in a room. Good for space, AC, rework to a “normal” space if you sell.
Depending on what your bottle count is, my recent research was to plan on 8 to 12 bottles per square foot of wall space. 8 is rectangular racking and 12 is individual racking with X’s being somewhere in between. You lose some if you turn a corner, but you could make an L room that was home plate shaped with a door on the diagonal. You could get 500 bottles easily into a 5x5 with diagonal door. then the rest is sitting area.
Next owner can just tear out the inner wine room (or use it as a large closet), patch some drywall and have the place back as a bonus room.
That setup might be good for using one of those wine room things from vintage cellars.
If it were me, I would probably keep as much of the casita feel as possible for future owners. Upgrade the windows and get good blackout shades. Pull out the current sheetrock and put in good insulation and vapor barrier. Pull out the floor and put in something like wine barrel flooring. Upgrade lighting. Use stand alone racks from one of the big suppliers that you can easily change if your tastes change (e.g., adding large format bottles). That way, it would be a great home office for resale - which will have a broader appeal than just wine storage.
I am at the drywall phase of my cellar build out and it’s basically a big closet or safe room for the next owner that doesn’t want a wine room. It’s in the basement and I only have 7.5’ ceilings plus getting big units down there is a nightmare which is why I did what I did rather than what I suggested.
Do you have a windowless wall? I can’t really tell from the photos?
If you don’t want the wall of fridges you could do a glass (or walled off) front cellar in the corner that doesn’t have windows.
Something along these lines? Especially with the 10’ ceilings. I would suggest floor to ceiling and a library ladder.
I’m unclear what this ‘room in a room’ really means - do you have a sketch or photo?
Yes, East and North facing walls have windows, West and South do not, and the West wall has the enclosed garage bay on the other side of the wall, so that’s the only one that has no external facing wall.
The East wall has a window that starts only 8 inches from the back wall, so there’s not room for a rack there without window exposure, otherwise, what I’m reading here, the ‘room within a room’ concept would have that one window blocked off, leaving the others open. Severe blackout curtains, extra insulative film on the window, etc.
The ‘room within a room’ could work but the a/c vent is located smack dab in the middle of the room, so which room gets the air-conditioning? Is the concept to have another cooler installed to cool the cellar, and the a/c built in cool the rest of the room?
Yours looks AWESOME, by the way!
Having two separate units is pretty typical. Especially for humidity control.
I can’t speak for your part of the country but in most places having an AC unit that is oversized is a bad thing. It won’t be able to properly cool and control humidity. That will be one thing to consider if you wall it off.
Seems like it is oversized already, frankly, for the room as is.
Todd, Google “wine cellar” and add “stone”, “modern”, or “glass” or whatever then click on images.
Find something you like first.
I can help with the nuts and bolts. I’ve done lots of stone, wood flooring, etc.
I have all the tools. Will work for food and beer.
The room in room concept is because people built big cellars with tables and chairs and then realized nobody wants to sit in a 58 degree cellar freezing their ass off drinking wine. So they have “two rooms”. A wine cellar and wine room which are divided. They can have the same theme just one side is room temperature.
THIS 100%^^^^^^^^
I wondered how long it would take you to chime in - you know the casita well, you should have good ideas! Not sure if 11’ x 11’ is big enough for a sitting room AND a cellar, but it’s possible, I guess. I wasn’t thinking of hosting a party in there, of course, and most of the wine would be taken OUT of the room and into the house where there are comfortable chairs and Sonos…and Jen!
If ‘room in room’ a glass wall like JDavisRoby’s would be sweet but then the windows are an issue with UV again, though if the one was completely covered (as it would be in the area of the cellar, three others could just have intense film to keep all UV out? Or curtains, I guess.
Would it be that much easier to do room-in-room versus total conversion?
Todd, that isn’t mine. Ha! I just pulled that one off the interwebs. Did an image search like brig recommended.
My basement room in room is clad in reused original to the house 1925 pine plank paneling on the outside and then it’ll be the purple or green wallboard on the interior walls. Then I’ll have it wrapped in cut to fit (internet ordered) pine racking. With a 5.5’x10’ space I’ll have space for about 950-1,000 depending upon on how you case stack. Now, I have 7.5’ ceilings so with an extra 2.5’ all the way around you could pack quite a bit of wine in a 6’x11x10’ space.
I’ve found that other than the active cooking the two most expensive pieces are proper insulation and the racking. You can make all the other stuff expansive but unless it’s a focal point of your home I think a lot of the design elements are fluff or overkill.
I didn’t use glass because of the cost and I wanted mine to blend in and look original to my 1925 house.
My favorite room within a room design wine cellar is what republique did with their walk in cellar in the main dining area (not the full cellar). It’s a glass enclosed ~10 ft high walk in wine cooler that’s probably like 5 x 5 feet (I can’t find a picture I can link right now, but that sort of room within a room would be neat, I think.