Wine cellars are essential when you want to get serious with your wine collection. Wine is a delicate and complex substance, and it requires just the right elements to come together to make sure that it is stored well and aged properly.
Options have been made available on the market that will help aspiring wine collectors replicate the ideal conditions in the wine cellars in the chilly French countryside.
When constructing a wine cellar, you must ensure that the crucial conditions for proper wine preservation are present. Two important facets of proper wine cellar construction are installing a proper vapor barrier and making sure the doors, walls, and windows are completely sealed.
Things to Keep in Mind in Sealing Florida Wine Cellars
Vapor Barrier
A vapor barrier keeps the warm air from the outside or from adjacent rooms from seeping through the walls of your wine cellar. If this happens, condensation will occur, and over the course of time cause mildew and mold to form inside your cellar, affecting wine’s quality.
The vapor barrier stops this from happening. You can typically use a 6-8 mm plastic sheet for the vapor barrier, available in most Home Depots. They should be wrapped around your wine cellar on the warm side of the insulation. Note that the cool side of the wall is the one which actually encloses your wine collection. This essentially covers your wine collection from heat and humidity.
Wine Cellar Door
Another aspect of sealing your wine cellar is making sure that your wine cellar door is airtight. The wine cellar door should be weather-stripped on all four sides of the door jam. There should be a bottom door-sweep to prevent outside air from flowing into your wine cellar when the door is closed. Solid core doors or full glass doors are recommended. But, if you prefer a glass door, it should have double-pane insulated tapered glass. Premium grade silicone caulk must be used to seal door casing to the wall.
Window
Just as your wine cellar entryway, the windows must also be sealed. The use of quality insulated glass, good sealant, and a high quality frame is recommended. A reliable window foam sealant is recommended to prevent the intrusion of warm air, thus preventing wine faults.
Walls
Other ways you can ensure an airtight wine cellar is to build an extra wall that is made out of waterproof materials and leave a 1cm airpocket in between the two walls. Another way is to apply polyurethane on the wall that is already there and then cover it with cement and plaster panels.
Sealing is very important to make sure that your wine cellar cooling system will be able to perform its job efficiently which is to maintain the ideal temperature and humidity in your Florida custom wine room. This is especially critical if you live in an area with a warm climate such as Florida. Florida wine cellar owners need to make sure that their cellars are completely sealed in order to protect their wines from harmful external factors.
Wine Cellar International is a Florida wine cellar builder that offers its clients the best wine storage solutions available. Visit their website at http://www.winecellarinternational.com/ for more information about their products and services.