Fortunately, after quite a bit of browsing the web, it became clear that I had some better alternatives without spending $3 a bottle on racking.
I chose three styles: a 3' wide bottle rack for the center, a corner unit on each side of that, with a diamond-bin rack on the left and the right. This gave me a goodly number of individual bins as well as places to pile my larger quantities. Total cost with shipping came to $550 or so, which for 620 bottle capacity is a pretty good deal---competitive with wire racking and with more variation of racking styles.
I have mixed feelings about the quality of the racks. They have a more expensive line of racking ("premium" redwood) which may be better than the ones I bought. When I first unpacked the unassembled racks, I was surprised at how lightweight redwood is. Many of the beams are only ½"x2" or ½"x1", which when inspected out of context appear to be positively flimsy. In fact they tell you to be careful when hammering so that you don't break the wood. On the individual bottle slots I was initially disappointed at how small the bottle rods were, and the fact that they are only stapled to the support beams. Upon closer inspection, the bottle rods to be more than adequate to each support a single bottle of wine, and I imagine that staples were the only way to attach them without splitting the wood.
While the unassembled redwood is fragile, once the racks are together they are quite strong. With each beam and bottle rod being as thin as they are, you achieve bottle density much better than if you were to use thicker wood. I also appreciated the lightness of the racks when having to move them around before final mounting.
The only thing I thought to be a real problem were the diamond racks. After initially thinking I'd saved the easy racks for last, I soon discovered otherwise---more on this later.
In the center of the picture above is the 3' wide individual bottle rack. It consists of nine columns of twenty bottles, giving you 180 slots, plus room on top for a case or two. The only thing that has been pre-assembled for you are the vertical posts, which have had the bottle rods stapled on for you. Assembly consists of carefully laying the vertical posts into the horizontal beams (the wood has been pre-notched to interlock), then nailing all the joints with small finishing nails. There are four metal brackets which screw into the rack and then into the wall 2" behind the rack.
The corner units were the most intriguing of the racks, and definitely contribute to the "coolness" factor of the wine room layout. Each unit consist of four individual towers that you assemble separately, which at twenty bottles each tower gives you 80 bottles. Once again, the only pre-assembly are the posts and bottle rods. This rack is the most tedious, as you have to lay in each small horizontal beam and nail the joints---a process you must do four times.
Once you've built the four towers, they rather loosely attach to each other via metal plates, which are visible in the above close-up view. These plates just drop on without being fastened. A first glance this appears unstable, and makes positioning them tricky as you have to be careful how you lift the entire unit. On closer inspecition this turns out to be a smart idea. You brace the corner by screwing in each side post to the adjacent rack (which in turn has been braced to the wall). This is more than adequate for the outer towers. The inner towers are then quite stable even with the just the loosely-fitted plates. The loose fitting allows the corner to expand and contract, which gives you room for error once you've mounted the adjacent racks.
The diamond bins were built last, and they were by far the most frustrating. They consist of twenty bins, each of which can hold seven bottles, giving you 140 bottles total. I'm not sure how the manufacturer can claim 204 bottles per diamond rack, although you can put two cases on top and sometimes squeeze an extra split in each bin.
At first the bins looked like a cakewalk. You simply line up three posts and interlock the horizontal beams. From there you just nail the joints, which are far fewer in number than any of the other racks. You do this three times, giving you three sets of ten square bins. These frames mount into a metal bracket which spaces them evenly front-to-back to form the rack. Lastly, there are ten pre-assembled diagonal braces which form the diamonds, and all you have left to do is slide them into the squares.
Hah! The manufacturer obviously wanted a snug fit, which ensures that the braces don't move and that they also contribute to the stability of the rack. As you can see you end up with four braces coming together at a single intersection. The first three of these braces go in fairly smoothly, but heaven help you with that fourth! After much consternation I ended up having to sand down some of the braces and do slow careful work with a rubber mallet to get the braces in. Boy it's sturdy all right, and those braces ain't goin' nowhere! Even after sanding down the some of the braces I ended up with some of the outer joints bowing out, which is disconcerting but doesn't appear to have adversely affected the rack. I freely admit that I may have missed something obvious, but at the time I was at a complete loss as to how I could have done it any easier way.
Total time spent assembling the racks was probably on the order of 6-8 hours, spent over the course of a week.
I picked up a KoolSpace 300, which is rated to cool up to 300 cubic feet, and at $600 is one of the most cost-efficient models around. So far I've been happy with it (caveat: I've only had it a week), and it is quieter than I thought it would be. I was expecting the noise of an air conditioner, including the sudden jolts as starts and stops. The KoolSpace in fact starts and stops quite gracefully, the compressor is quiet, and it has low velocity fans which are very quiet. If you live in a moderately noisy environment you likely won't hear it at all. Our house is very quiet, but during the day the noise the unit generates is very unobtrusive. I am glad it does not sit underneath any bedrooms, as you would be able to hear it cycling at night if you were directly above it on the next floor.
The manual specs that you need at least R20 insulation (the foamboard we mounted got us there), and a dedicated 15-amp electrical circuit. I got lucky in that the back wall has an outlet on a 20-amp circuit, which is only shared by the outlet at the workbench on the other side of the wall. So for the most part this unit has its own circuit, and will share it occasionally with only light power tools.
The unit is designed to vent hot exhaust to an adjacent room (not outdoors), which is how I have it configured. Unfortunately the original storage room shrunk quite a bit once we added the new wine room, and itself is heavily insulated. So on a warm day the cooling unit can easily heat the storage room up over 80 degrees F, which is beyond the 25-degree differential the unit is rated to handle. To solve this I plan on keeping the windows open in the summer, which alone has been helpful. For an additional buffer I mounted a thermostat-controlled window fan which exhausts hot air to the outside once the storage room gets too warm. So far this arrangement has worked out fine, and the room temperature has topped out at only 77, which doesn't appear to have affected the interior temperature of the wine room.
Copyright (c) 1998, David Yon
yon@rfdsoftware.com