lets talk root cellars and building a new one

[elkhound]

lets talk about building root cellars.what do you have.....what would you change......and how big it should be.i am in the planning stage of a cellar.i want to make a cellar that i can use as a canning, butchering and storage place also.any and all ideas welcome.i got a big pepsi cooler to put in there for ageing meat also.got some nice teflon cutting boards(2ft x about4.5ft) to make counter tops out of.i am going to put drains in floor also so can just hose down when done canning or what ever.thanks for any ideas and suggestions.also any photos of what you have would be great if you dont mind sharing them with me.

Been dreaming of one for years. I've got a book called "Root Cellaring" by Mike & Nancy Buble. It has a lot of great tips in it for you when planning on building or doing with smaller storage containers. Look for the book if you haven't got it already.

[electronrider]

If your going to go all out, maybe make it big enough for a tornado/bad weather shelter as well. I have read where people have buried those huge culverts ( 10 feet in diameter) that were as long as you would need, then it's just a matter of outfitting it the way you want.

[Muskrat]

We separated the functions, that is, the root cellar is used for storage, but not for the mechanics of canning. We found that to accomodate everything we were compromising so that nothing was as good as it should be.

Good luck with the project.

[FrankTheTank]

My basement (cinder block, unfinished, big, open, no heat) is currently 45F, thats pretty much a root cellar!

[collegeboundgal]

here is a post from another forum about goats, but it has a pict. of the most lovely root celler I've ever seen.

http://dairygoatsplus.com/forum/view...ht=root+celler

-Melissa

[elkhound]

collegegal....that is a great looking place.thanks for sharing that with us.that is the kind of place i am looking to build.i might make it 2 rooms....the front room for canning and hanging chickens,rabbits and such in my big cooler....the back room for food stuff.i am getting dirt for another project from this area.so it is a spin off from another project.here is the hole as it is now.i need more dirt so it will get farther back in the hilside.its in the shade most of the day also.

[cowboy joe]

This is the first year with the new root cellar. The room is fairly small (4x7) section of an existing cinder block basement with a concrete floor. It may not seem like enough room but all the shelving provides plenty of storage space.

The biggest problem this year wasn't the room itself, it was the higher than normal outside temps. Western NY is never in the 60's in December. The root cellar went up into the 50s, causing some premature spoilage.

The basement root cellar was inexpensive, easy to build & went up fairly quick. Ideally, I would rather have a separate, dugout room with stone walls and an earth floor.

All of the canning / meat processing is done in the kitchen area as the root cellar is cold, damp & not very clean.

[WisJim]

Make it convenient to haul potatoes, apples, cabbage, etc., into it in the fall, and convenient to make a quick trip to it any time, no matter what the weather is, all winter and the rest of the year. I would have seperate rooms for foods with different storage requirements or that shouldn't be stored next to each other, and I would make it accessible to the kitchen without going outside or through another room, but also make it easy to haul food into with a wheelbarrow. My conclusion is to make it into a hillside, accessible from the kitchen, and with an outside door for hauling food into it and easily cleaning it in the summer. My "ideal" rootcellar may require a new house designed around it (or so my wife tells me).

[madness]

Aw, you guys are so lucky! The temperature in the root cellar is dependent on your average highs and lows for the entire year - so in the NE, you get a nice cold cellar. Well, here in Central Texas, it's gonna be 68! Not really worth it...plus all the limestone you'd have to jack hammer through...

If you are interested in what temperature your root cellar will be, find out what your maximum and minimum daily temperatures (i.e. the temp at noon on the hottest day and on the coldest day). Here's a website that has some US city info:

http://lwf.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/...d/maxtemp.html

Then convert to degress C:

http://www.onlineconversion.com/temperature.htm

and plug it in here:

http://soilphysics.okstate.edu/toolk...re/index0.html

The graph on the left will show you what the "steady state" temperature is - this is reached at about 5 meters below ground (or 15 feet). You can change the month above to see what the surface temperature is and how it affects the curve. Pretty neat!

[FrankTheTank]

using that calculator, i come up with about a 50F soil temp @ around 4m (12ft) in jan....

[WisJim]

You can get it cooler sooner in the fall if it is well insulated and has forced ventilation to bring in outside air when it is cooler outside. That will bring your average root cellar temp lower than the average soil temp.