Cold room in my basement - My idea

[grandjardinier]

Hello Friends,

I built a cold room in my basement.

I made vegies bins too and shelves

Pictures :---> My cold room

[RICHFL]

A very good idea if you live well above the 30th parallel. But I live in Florida and we do not have basements. We have sand.

[Applejack]

Wish we had a basement. Here where we live very few houses were built with a basement and the ones that do have them have big flooding problems.

[Morgan101]

Excellent idea. Make sure everything is stored off of the floor. Pallets work well if you can get them.

[Cedar]

I have always had root cellars, not a cold room. I built one root cellar in Canada, refabbed an old one here in Oregon, and hope to build another one, although smaller here on my new property.

I am dubious about my water table here, as I want a root cellar, not an inground swimming pool And the reason I am replying here was to the 'no basement' folks.

Not all root cellars are in a hillside, nor in the ground per session. I wish I could post pics here to show you. On the plains and high water table areas, I have seen above ground root cellars, both in the states and Canada. My fav one I never did take a photo of, but I do have others.

They look a bit like a large molehill. The structure is built on the normal ground surface and then dirt is basically packed around and over it. My favorite one had like a Hobbit door on it, and flowers grew all over it, and hollyhocks by the door.

The first one I went in looked like a concrete utility vault thing? It was unused, but it was formerly a root cellar at some point. Another one was log, probably pine, as that is what grown in the area I lived, but other than the door, being it was built around the 1860s, was in very good shape. And if you Google "root cellar plains' or something like that, and go to images, you might see one from settlers on the Great Plains.

Is that something you guys can do in your high water table and/or sandy areas for a cool room? The dirt will insulate even on hot days, especially if you have double doors. My root cellar in Canada had 18" of dirt (I wanted more), my last cellar was concrete walls, floor and ceiling with 18" to 36" of dirt?

Maybe that is an option?

Cedar

[Applejack]

My grandparents house has one under the house. Dirt floor and walls. No basement to speak of but grandpa had dug out under the house for one as he was building the house when they first got married. It was not huge but served them well. But also they lived in much higher ground then where I am now. We have no basement either but would really love to have one. I keep telling myself one day I will be back in the country. Hubby is not budging from where we are now. When I married him 32 years ago, the house came with him. Guess I should have pushed for him to move to country at least 30 years ago but I more than likely would have lost. He is really stuck on keeping this house. But at 80 years old there is no changing him now. There is just not enough land living in a neighborhood. We have right at one acer of land with the house in middle of it. 2 sheds and a garden, a place for the wood pile for fireplace and that almost covers it.. Not allowed to do much for front yard because of neighborhood rules. Although I did get him to agree that if anything should happen that we have to leave he will go to my grandparents homestead with the family. So that's good.

[Kootenay prepper]

I've had both a below ground and above ground mound style root cellar. The below ground root cellar was a lot easier to secure from bears or other animals but I found you get a couple bad years of rain and snow it takes tons of attention to keep the roof and walls secure. The above ground I've found if you need to do repairs its a lot easier but also have to pay more attention to deter animals digging in.

[dalewick]

Hoping this is a good idea since it's now included in the plans for our retirement home. If the wife retiring and us building a new home doesn't kill me I'll post about it.

Dale

[Applejack]

Best of luck to you in getting your house built. I know it will work out for the two of you. I just need to find land and my daughter told me to hold off right now. I think she is still planning something.

[CountryGuy]

Hoping this is a good idea since it's now included in the plans for our retirement home. If the wife retiring and us building a new home doesn't kill me I'll post about it.Dale

So are you guys planning to build your retirement place in WV or are you all thinking of relocating somewhere warmer?

[dalewick]

So are you guys planning to build your retirement place in WV or are you all thinking of relocating somewhere warmer?

Staying in WV and planning on being snowbirds for Jan and Feb and going to different places down south. Can always go see our oldest girl for a month in FL, at least until she gets married. LOL! I'm wanting to go to Belize a couple times and a few other spots south of the border and soon I'll get to travel again but with a great travel partner this time.

Dale

[Applejack]

Congratulations on your retirement Dale. I know you and your wife will enjoy it. Hubby retired disability and I retired about 5 years early so we could do some traveling. Glad we did it when we could as hubby can't travel these days. But fun while it lasted. Do all the traveling while you can. It can be lots of fun.

[CountryGuy]

You know I never thought about it till now but my grandmas home has a covered front porch and under it is part of the basement that was always the storeroom for all the canned goods and potatoes and such. never really hit me until now that it was it's own little cold room. I've seen basement rooms done out where they insulate them but then they always seem to have a vent pipe from inside to outside. Would this be to let the warmer "cool" air escape and to cause a draft to pull up cooler air from the floor? Grandmas has a little window that was always kept closed and a wood door to close it off to the rest of the basement that had a small drive in garage.

[Snyper708]

You know I never thought about it till now but my grandmas home has a covered front porch and under it is part of the basement that was always the storeroom for all the canned goods and potatoes and such. never really hit me until now that it was it's own little cold room. I've seen basement rooms done out where they insulate them but then they always seem to have a vent pipe from inside to outside. Would this be to let the warmer "cool" air escape and to cause a draft to pull up cooler air from the floor? Grandmas has a little window that was always kept closed and a wood door to close it off to the rest of the basement that had a small drive in garage.

Basements are usually vented to the outside to reduce moisture and prevent the buildup of Radon gas.

[CountryGuy]

Basements are usually vented to the outside to reduce moisture and prevent the buildup of Radon gas.

Not so much in houses built in the 30's...