The most important elements of any wine storage systems are wine cellar cooling units that or wine cellar coolers that provide the ideal conditions for storing and ageing wines.
Whether you plan to buy a refrigerated wine cabinet or build your own wine room you have to pay extra attention on the cooling unit.
These wine cellar coolers aren’t air-conditioners but are designed to ensure and maintain specific environment for proper wine storage. Price of wine cellar coolers varies between 1,500- 10,000 $ which depends highly on the size of the cellar or room you want to cool.
With a modern wine cooling system you can mimic conditions existing in natural wine cellars: dark, quite, cool environment with temperature around 55 – 58 °F. It’s not the exact value of the temperature in the cellar that is important but the rate of fluctuation that shouldn’t be greater than 2 degrees during a 24-hour cycle.
Regarding humidity – 50-75% relative humidity is required for wine storage – cheaper wine cellar
Coolers can only remove humidity from a room, increase humidity level to appropriate level you need to buy a humidifier.
High-end wine cellar coolers, however provide stable control of humidity level so you won’t have to spend on a humidifier.
If you keep your wine at a place where humidity level is higher than 75-80 % mold will ruin the labels. Humidity lower than 50% causes the cork to dry out thus letting too much air into the bottle which accelerates aging and can spoil your wine.
Types of Wine Cellar Cooling Units
All coolings ystems consist of three elements:
- evaporator,
- condenser, and
- controls
Depending on the assembly of these parts wine cellar coolers can be grouped as follows:
Through-the-Wall or Self-Contained Wine Cellar Cooling Units
Through the-wall wine cellar coolers have several advantages:
- they’ll maintain 55-58 °F and humidity of 55-75% which is optimal for long term wine storage
- they are designed to operate without much vibration
- since they’re self-contained, compact units a HVAC technician is not required to install the system, whicm menas less cost
- a self-contained cooling unit is easy to install, you only have to cut a hole in the wall then the unit have to be mounted with flanges on the exterieor of the cellar wall.
- No extra maintenance is required, you only have to vacuum the coils and change filters.
Breezaire, Koolspace, WhisperKool are reliable self-contained wine cellar coolers.
Split Wine Cellar Cooling Systems
The evaporator and the condenser parts are split. The evaporator is placed in the wine room or cellar while the condenser is located outside or in another spacious room (basement, garage). The two parts are connected with copper tubing.
Split air cooling system is recommended for a place where the daily temperature varies greatly. Split air refrigeration is lless noisy during operation.
Split Air Handler
Split air handlers are very advanced cellar cooling systems. The unit, that operates that an ordinary central air conditioning sytem, is placed outside the cellar with the supply and return air ducted to and from the cellar.
Selecting a Wine Cellar Cooler
Factors to consider when buying a wine cellar cooling unit:
- Size – calculate the how much cubic meters is the cellar or wine room you’re going to cool.
- Noise – compare the noise levels of certain cooling units and if the noise is an issue than choose a cooler system that has the lowest nosie level. In general split air coooling systems are more silent than self-contained coolers.
- Installation – to install a split air cooling system you’ll need a licensed HVAC technician. Though you’ll pay attention to the noise levels of wine cellar coolers and you’ll buy the one that’s the least noisy make sure you don’t installnext to the room wher you sleep. There’s ineveitably some noise when the system’s fan starts running.
- Price – you can get a small wine cellar cooler that covers about 1000 cubic feet or less for aorund 500-1000 $. the larger area you need to cool the pricier the coolings ystem will be.
- Warranty – as with any other appliances always check the length of warranty and what it covers. A reliable wine cooler unit naufacturer ofefrs 3-5-year warranty on its products.
Recommended Wine Cellar Coolers
CellarPro – High-quality cellar cooling units with tempearture and humidity control. Read detailed features and benefits of CellarPro cooling system.
Breezaire – has a wide range of wine cooling units, both self-contained and split sytems. The Breezaire WK systems are one of the cheapest wine cellar cooling units starting from 500 $.
Koolspace – the koolR™ are low-cost, through-the-wall cooling units rated to refriegrating up to 900 cubic feet. Price: cc. 500 $
WhisperKOOL – offers both self-contained, wall-mounted cellar cooelrs and split cooling units. Wide variety of models capable of cooling up to 2000 cubic feet. The company is considered to be a leader in manufaturing wine cellar cooling appliances. The cheapest WhisperKOOL units are around 1300 $.
WineMate – state-of-the-art cooling sytems for wine rooms, wine cabinets and cellars. They have a very useful cooling system buying guide on their website
Wine Guardian – easy-to-install through-the-wall wine cellar coolers with ducted air system. Prices start from around 3200 $.
Maintenance of Wine Cellar Cooling Units
The space to where the wine cellar cooling unit vents into has to be at least twice the size of the cellar.
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Custom Wine Cellars – build your wine cellar using custom wine cellar design and equipment.
