This fall, we finally built our root cellar! Well, not so much a cellar as a shed... We built it over the existing crawlspace access on the side of the house, so we can use the constant temperature of the crawlspace as a heating source in the winter and cooling source in the summer. Go geothermal! Since in Colorado you can't add directly onto a mobile (dumbest. law. ever.), we had to build it 'adjacent' to the house, but it's right up against it, which also helps in temperature regulation (in fact, the wall up against the side of the house isn't even insulated). We do have to keep the crawlspace trap door open, and with the help of a single incandescent bulb, we're able to keep it a very constant temperature of 40 degrees, even when it's dipped down to 0 outside at night! Without the light bulb on, it gets down to about 33, which is just a wee bit cold for our liking. But 40 is perfect! And it makes an awesome wine/beer cellar!!!
It's not sided yet, but it's functional!
That's looking under the house- Not too comfortable to get down under there, but it's great for critter-proof buckets of stuff we have multiples of. Those buckets have wheat grain in them- the real deal!
Great bucket storage for wheat berries, flour, sugar, beans, etc., and non-perishables that aren't in critterproof containers are in that big rubbermaid tub on the floor. We've also got a good stash of household items!
Home-canned goods look so pretty on the shelves!
The downside of having to leave the trapdoor open- Watch that first step, it's a doozy!
And there's the root cellar! It's not quite as full as we'd like it to be, but it's a start! Plus it frees up a TON of cabinet space in the house, which is a precious commodity as it is! I hope it's as much of a success in the summer as it is in the winter- only time will tell!
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