We encourage our customers to bring their wine storage ideas to us so that we may assist with the design and implementation of their wine room. These designs come to us in a variety of ways and with varying levels of detail. Some clients send their entire residential or commercial floorplans with the wine cellar buried in a mountain of detail, others fax a pen and napkin drawing that they drew with their buddies the night before. No matter how we get these ideas, we assess each project individually and then attempt to fill in the blanks using the drawing.
If you are considering constructing a wine cellar of your own, you will save some time if you make sure to provide the following information along with your sketch:
- How many bottles you wish to ultimately store. That means plan on future additions to your collection and overestimate instead of underestimate the number. It’s a lot easier to have a little empty racking when your cellar is done than it is to immediately start looking for ways to add more storage
- Exact measurements – Our designs are very accurate, and variations in measurements often prove to be a headache during installation. Make sure your measurements for the racking are inside dimensions and allow for wall coverings such as sheetrock, paneling and other wall treatments such as stone or tile
- Whether the cellar will be temperature controlled or not. This detail often gets left until too far into the project. It is very difficult to “retrofit” a wine cellar space for a cooling unit, given that the walls, floors and ceilings are often inadequately insulated for active cooling.
Obviously there are many other details that you’ll need to address before your cellar is done, but these are a few of the biggest details that we often do not know when we receive a client’s sketch. If you want more information on how to prepare your cellar for racking, visit www.wineracksamerica.com or contact a wine cellar specialist by calling 1-888-373-6057.
Cheers!