We're planning to remodel the basement, and we will add a wine cellar
to it. The basement has 8" to 12" thick block masonry walls. I want
the walls and ceilings of the wine cellar to be insulated as well as
possible, while the floor remains uninsulated (so we get the thermal
mass of the ground 8' below the house, without getting the thermal
fluctuations through the masonry walls, or from the rest of the house
or the rest of the basement).

My plan is to build the wine cellar as a room with double walls: Two
2x4 stud walls, with 2" of gap inbetween. The gap is filled with
sheet insulation (polyurethane or polyisocyanurate), R-7 per inch. On
the two outside walls (towards the masonry outside), the sheet
insulation goes directly against the masonry wall.

Moisture is not an issue. Our basement walls are perfectly dry
(thanks to a benign climate, good drainage, and the correct soils
outside). The inside of the wine cellar is finished with drywall
(needed for fire protection reasons). I need the stud walls to hold
shelving within the room. I can't make the walls any thicker, without
loosing too much floor area.

The default would be to insulate the stud walls with R-13 fiberglass
insulation. This gives a total insulation of R-40 for the interior
walls (two times R-13 stud wall, plus 2x R-7 for the sheet
insulation), and R-27 for the exterior wall. There are minor
corrections to the R-value (due to the studs, bolts to hold the walls
together, and reflective surfacing on the sheet insulation).

Would it be advantageous to insulate the stud walls with sheet
insulation also? I could take 2" and 1 1/2" sheets of such foam
insulation, carefully cut them into pieces that fit the wall cavities,
and drywall over them. At the edges (where a perfect fit is
impossible), I could use spray foam insulation (the stuff from spray
cans). In principle, this would greatly increase the R-value, as 3
1/2" of sheet insulation is R-24.5, compared to the R-13 available in
fiberglass. But I worry that in practice, the gain is much smaller,
given that the sheet insulation never fits perfectly, while the
fiberglass batts can be carefully stuffed into the walls.

Within limits, money is not the issue. The room is small enough (10'
by 6' finished size) that the cost of insulation is not all that
large.

Does it make sense to use sheet insulation? Is there anything even
better I can do?

--
The address in the header is invalid for obvious reasons. Please
reconstruct the address from the information below (look for _).
Ralph Becker-Szendy _firstname_@lr _dot_ los-gatos _dot_ ca.us

wrote in message
news:1074738793.129046@smirk...
....
My plan is to build the wine cellar as a room with double walls: Two
2x4 stud walls, with 2" of gap inbetween. The gap is filled with
sheet insulation (polyurethane or polyisocyanurate), R-7 per inch. On
the two outside walls (towards the masonry outside), the sheet
insulation goes directly against the masonry wall.

Seems a bit overkill for a basement, but you may want to consider something
called stress skin panels or structural insulating panels for this
application. It basically looks like a giant ice cream sandwich where the
outside is typically OSB plywood and the inside is either polyurethane or
polyisocyanurate. There are variants where one side is OSB and the other
side is sheetrock or OSB on one side and nothing on the other side.

You can sheetrock over the OSB facing the interior of your wine cellar and
then you could hang shelves anywhere because you wouldn't need to find a
stud.

Where are you going to find a door to match this super-insulated wine room?

-al sung
Rapid Realm Technology, Inc.
Hopkinton, MA

"Alan Sung" wrote:

Where are you going to find a door to match this super-insulated wine room?

We plan on building a wine room that's very similar(dry basement,
cement floor, 10'x6') but without the double walls. We're insulating
the walls with either the spray foam (depending on cost) or the
highest R-value batts we can with a vapor barrier on the warm side,
and the ceiling with batts and a vapor barrier. We'll also keep a
humidifier in the room if it proves too dry (should be about 60%-70%
humidity). For a door we're using an insulated outside door with
weather stripping to prevent heat transfer. The wine room will be
nowhere near any heat ducts or vents. One thing we're doing
differently is putting in a laminate floor...there's a slightly
smaller chance of dropped items smashing, and it's more comfortable
and nicer to look at than bare concrete.

You don't say what your climate is like - if you get extreme
temperature or moisure fluctuations you may want to look into a
cooling unit or humidifier. We're in the Pacific northwest, so extreme
heat/cold or dryness isn't a major concern.

Some good links:

http://www.westside-group.com/buildwineroom.html
http://www.iulaw.indy.indiana.edu/in...WineCellar.htm
http://www.vintage-cellar.com/howto.asp

Good luck!

- ScorpioChick

In article D%GPb.97699$Rc4.597699@attbi_s54, Alan Sung wrote:
My plan is to build the wine cellar as a room with double walls:
....
Seems a bit overkill for a basement, but you may want to consider something
called stress skin panels or structural insulating panels for this
application. It basically looks like a giant ice cream sandwich where the
outside is typically OSB plywood and the inside is either polyurethane or
polyisocyanurate. There are variants where one side is OSB and the other
side is sheetrock or OSB on one side and nothing on the other side.

You can sheetrock over the OSB facing the interior of your wine cellar and
then you could hang shelves anywhere because you wouldn't need to find a
stud.

Sounds like a good idea, as long as all the weight of the wine racks
is supported by the floor. Sadly, this is not our situation. Our
house is less than 2 miles from the San Andreas fault, and is designed
for earthquake forces of 0.65g sideways. This means that the wine
racks have to be heavily anchored on the walls, and the walls have to
be strong enough to hold the wine (meaning pretty much 2x4
construction, anchored into the concrete foundation and masonry
walls). I think a single sheet of OSB won't cut it. And holding the
wine racks through several inches of OSB into masonry anchors sounds
difficult.

This naturally leaves the problem of where to find wine racks that can
hold the bottles through a medium-size quake. Here is an example of
one approach, which supposedly has already survived several minor
quakes (it was built as a reaction to the 1989 earthquake, if I
remember right):
http://www.mckusick.com/~mckusick/images/winecellar.jpg

Naturally, in a major quake, one would expect all the wine to be
gone. In that situation, being alive and having a structurally sound
house is all one can ask for.

--
The address in the header is invalid for obvious reasons. Please
reconstruct the address from the information below (look for _).
Ralph Becker-Szendy _firstname_@lr _dot_ los-gatos _dot_ ca.us

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 22:55:20 -0000, wrote:

In article D%GPb.97699$Rc4.597699@attbi_s54, Alan Sung wrote:
My plan is to build the wine cellar as a room with double walls:
...
Seems a bit overkill for a basement, but you may want to consider something
called stress skin panels or structural insulating panels for this
application. It basically looks like a giant ice cream sandwich where the
outside is typically OSB plywood and the inside is either polyurethane or
polyisocyanurate. There are variants where one side is OSB and the other
side is sheetrock or OSB on one side and nothing on the other side.

You can sheetrock over the OSB facing the interior of your wine cellar and
then you could hang shelves anywhere because you wouldn't need to find a
stud.

Sounds like a good idea, as long as all the weight of the wine racks
is supported by the floor. Sadly, this is not our situation. Our
house is less than 2 miles from the San Andreas fault, and is designed
for earthquake forces of 0.65g sideways. This means that the wine
racks have to be heavily anchored on the walls, and the walls have to
be strong enough to hold the wine (meaning pretty much 2x4
construction, anchored into the concrete foundation and masonry
walls). I think a single sheet of OSB won't cut it. And holding the
wine racks through several inches of OSB into masonry anchors sounds
difficult.

This naturally leaves the problem of where to find wine racks that can
hold the bottles through a medium-size quake. Here is an example of
one approach, which supposedly has already survived several minor
quakes (it was built as a reaction to the 1989 earthquake, if I
remember right):
http://www.mckusick.com/~mckusick/images/winecellar.jpg

Naturally, in a major quake, one would expect all the wine to be
gone. In that situation, being alive and having a structurally sound
house is all one can ask for.


This may sound like a wild idea but suppose you hung it off the
ceiling with a hinge connection? Like a rope swing, side sway
movement would easily be tolerated. Some thought as to how to
construct this for your structure will be a given.