For those of you that have them, how much did you pay for them? The house my wife and I put an offer in on has under stairs storage. I want to turn it into a walk in cellar. I stopped by the only place I know of around West Palm Beach that does cellars and got a very rough quote of between $15K-$20K. This is for probably a 500-750 bottle cellar. This includes the glass door, racking, AC/humidity, insulating foam and all labor/installation. I was very suprised at the cost. Is this about right or should I keep looking?

Thanks for any input.

We spent about $12,000 to do a 10x12 space with room for about 1400 bottles. That included adding running water, a sink, removing and reframing a window, and new flooring. Stef and I did about 70% of the labor ourselves. Our friend Millie did the heavy carpentry and we paid her $30/h. We had a plumber do the water.

$15-$20k doesn't seem totally out of line. You could probably save a fair amount by taking on some of the G.C. stuff yourself if that's possible.

Jack, that seems really high to me. When I was looking into buying I had a friend who was a GC come take a look at a place I was interested in and give me a ball park, and it was a fraction of what you're saying. I'm talking just under $5K (and I needed to put up some dry wall). I think the trick is to do a lot of the work yourself, in the sense that you find your own cooling unit (under $1K shipped with a little legwork), your own racking, and have a regular carpenter / GC handle the project. If the room is already standing all you're really doing is insulating the walls (making them humidty-proof), installing a cooling unit with a vent (it's a matter of opening a venting hole), and putting up racks. I'm not saying this is something you or I could do ourselves, but doesn't really involve a special breed of carpenter.

Obviously the more bells and whistles you throw in the more expensive it gets, but definitely something a good carpenter can handle.

I'd be weary of a "Walk in wine cellar specialist". It just sounds like a great way to exploit a market that usually has consumers with deep pockets.

I'm sure the guy charging $15K will make it completely headache free, but you're defininitely paying a premium for some legwork that you could do yourself without much know-how, and think of all the wine you could buy with the extra cash

It may be about right depending on the racking.

I had a 12x12 room built in my basement and the room, door, walls, insulation, vapor barrier, wiring and lights cost under $5k.

I don't have racking yet, but I think I can get a pretty huge number of bottles in that amount of space. If I were to get really nice racking (for display) I'm sure it would be expensive. You can get wire racking from costco for not too much money.

aphilla,

is that include the cooling unit!

I've had three cellars, and I've made plenty of mistakes every time I built one.

I would suggest that you contact a local commercial A/C company (one who installs units for grocery stores & etc.) Paying the extra amount for a wine cooling split system unit is a waste......My split system was more than 4K +installation and that was 11 years ago and I think I could have saved more than half that amount by installing a commercial unit from an A/C contractor. Also, they are always on call for emergencies.

No, it doesn't include the cooling unit. I was hoping the temperature would be a little lower than it is given its location in the basement but after a year, I've decided to add a cooling unit.

JB- I live in Tampa. We built one through our kitchen into the garage. We used Wine Cellars of Distintion out of Largo. Cost was on the low side of your estimate. This was for the complete job and they had to build the entire cellar from scratch. It also included a custom made commercial refrigeration unit. Here's the link to their website.

http://winecellarsofdistinction.com

quote:

I'm sure the guy charging $15K will make it completely headache free, but you're defininitely paying a premium for some legwork that you could do yourself without much know-how, and think of all the wine you could buy with the extra cash

I think that's the key, I'd say it would start at about 15k and work down from there depending on how much of the work/headache you want to take on yourself.

I think you could get it down into the 5k range on just the basic hardware (insulation, door, racking, cooling, lighting).

I built it myself. Cost around $2K for materials. It's about 6 x 10 and the walls are 6 inches thick.

It's just a functional place. No sink, special lighting, etc. But even if I were to have done something with the lighting, it wouldn't have been a major cost increase.

You can build the cellar itself over a weekend. Building and installing the racking is different. If you buy ready-made racks, that's quick. If you make them, your time increases according to the complexity.

I'm not going to hang out in there to fondle my bottles. I just want to keep them cool and pack in as many as possible. The most efficient use of space is bins, but those are a real pain if you have Rhone shaped bottles. So I built shelves and spaced most of them 3 1/2 inches, which is fine for most normal shaped bottles. I left some that were 4" for Rhone shapes and Turleys, etc., and two at the bottom that were even larger for real stupid shapes. Should hold upwards of 1500 but I can go double deep along one wall and add another 750 or so.

I've done enough construction that I'm not going to hire someone to build me a closet. If you pay someone, I have no idea what they'd charge.

I have a passive 6x8 cellar. Started with a bit of the basement that stuck out into the earth on three sides. I insulated, tiled with slate, trimmed with cedar myself. I bought premade redwood racks and a wine barrel for a tasting table.

I have about 900 bottles currently crammed in and I could maybe fit in maybe another 400 if I lost the tasting table.
My cost for everything including lighting was about $1600.
Temps fluctuate seasonally between 46 and 64.

Thanks for the advice guys. I think I am going to call a cousin of mine who does AC work to install that and get my buddy who owns a door distributor to get a good, cheap door installed. I will have to use the other guy fo rmost everything else because I am,possibly, the most unhandy man in the world. If I could get the total cost between 8K-10K I would be pretty happy. I do want some cool racking and lights since it will be visible from the dinning room and family room.

Don't get a door that's too cheap or you'll be losing a lot of cooling. A normal exterior door isn't going to cut it and in your case, in FL, you have worse heat than we do up here in NYC so you want good insulation. You can build a door fairly easily however. Get two pieces of 1/2" or 5/8" plywood and cut to the size you want the door to be.

Figure out your door size. Get some straight 1 x 6. Cut it to make a box that will be the size of the door you want. Get two pieces of plywood and cut to fit that box. Glue and Nail one side onto the box. Now fill the box with polystyrene foam that you can buy in 2 x 10 pieces. Glue and nail the other piece of plywood onto that. Seal it with a good varnish or polyurethane. That very light but somewhat clumsy box will be your door. Get some gate hinges to hang it.

Note - there's a trick to hanging it. Because it's so thick, the arc that it will make will be at its largest when the inside of the door hits the outside of the jamb. That's a problem you can solve by angling the side of the door farthest from your hinges. Or you can kind of kludge it with some other doorstop on the inside.

Anyhow, it's much cheaper and much better than anything you're going to buy.

I have a vk 250, but my brother built a small one in his basement maybe 6x8. It's really basic and he did it himself. Dont know the total cost but the cooling unit was $800 plus tax.

I am currently in the process of building a home cellar...rather I am currently in the process of paying someone to build a wine cellar for me.

Based on my experience, if you hire it out, $15K is a resonable expectation.

The tab for my nice, but not extravagant, 1800 bottle cellar will be in the 18K range. When I started, I had expected about half that expense.

Don't forget to add in the cost of a generator for the house. Or have arrangements for re-locating your collection to an off-site facility with back-up power.

You really don't want your 700 bottle collection sitting in temperatures like we are having today down here, when the power goes out from the next hurricane.

$20,000 / 750 bottles = $26.67/bottle cost
$20,000 / 500 bottles = $40/bottle cost



Keep aware of your per bottle cost. Does this seem reasonable?

I would think that would buy a lot of great wine and there'd be less expensive options.
YIKES! Just me...

quote:

Originally posted by GregT:
I built it myself. Cost around $2K for materials. It's about 6 x 10 and the walls are 6 inches thick.

It's just a functional place. No sink, special lighting, etc. But even if I were to have done something with the lighting, it wouldn't have been a major cost increase.

+1 here. I'm not sure of my total cost, but it was probably in the $5-6k range when you include the cooling unit and the shelving (I use restaurant grade metro shelves, 600lbs per shelf, saving a lot of space but not necessarily cheap). I currently house about 1000 bottles with capacity for about 250-400 more (never tried).

Here's a link discussing my cellar with another link in there about shelving.

quote:

Originally posted by grossie:
capacity for about 250-400 more (never tried).

Very tempting, that is. Arrangements can be made.

quote:

Originally posted by GregT:
Don't get a door that's too cheap or you'll be losing a lot of cooling. A normal exterior door isn't going to cut it and in your case, in FL, you have worse heat than we do up here in NYC so you want good insulation. You can build a door fairly easily however. Get two pieces of 1/2" or 5/8" plywood and cut to the size you want the door to be.

Figure out your door size. Get some straight 1 x 6. Cut it to make a box that will be the size of the door you want. Get two pieces of plywood and cut to fit that box. Glue and Nail one side onto the box. Now fill the box with polystyrene foam that you can buy in 2 x 10 pieces. Glue and nail the other piece of plywood onto that. Seal it with a good varnish or polyurethane. That very light but somewhat clumsy box will be your door. Get some gate hinges to hang it.

Note - there's a trick to hanging it. Because it's so thick, the arc that it will make will be at its largest when the inside of the door hits the outside of the jamb. That's a problem you can solve by angling the side of the door farthest from your hinges. Or you can kind of kludge it with some other doorstop on the inside.

Anyhow, it's much cheaper and much better than anything you're going to buy.

GregT- I like your hands on approach. I have a passive underground cellar that was originally used for storing canned goods. This is my Fall project and I may be in need of some advice.