Peter Parry wrote:

On Mon, 22 Nov 2004 23:30:01 GMT, (Fred) wrote:

Now we live in the North where temps don't raise very
high in the summer; I have no problem to allow the temp to reach 20C
or so for a few days/weeks and I have no problem to allow the temp to
go down to about 10C or so. But how to achieve this?

Someone I once knew had a similar problem and used an old brick built
air raid shelter in their garden. They insulated it with about 6in
of foil lined Cellotex and excavated about 2ft of soil from inside.
Outside they built a deep french drain to keep the floor dry. It was
ventilated by a small fan at floor level and a roof vent (I gather
passive ventilation would have been preferred but as the original
building had no air bricks would have been difficult to achieve).
The temperature remained very steady throughout the year changing
only very slowly (which I'm told is more important than absolute
temperature).

In the absence of a suitable air raid shelter you might be able to do
similar by excavating a suitable hole and building a heavily
insulated brick structure.

An obvious place to do so would be the garden shed. But this one has a
backwall to the neighbours. Would digging internally and building up
brick walls to keep the hole stable affect the overall stability of
the shed? The last, yes last thing I would want is litterally dig in
my wine after piles of rubble from a collapsing shed. I am not that
keen on storing my bottles ;-)

F