My cold room building to preserve my vegetable

Hello friends,

In fall, I load my bins with my kitchen vegetable.

To preserve them, i built a walk In cold room in my home basement. Its ok too for canning storage and store beverage.

----> My positive cold room building pictures.

idea:

 

Very interesting, and timely for me as we are revamping the garage into a kitchen and part of that is a "larder". In olden times that would have been on a North wall, and had a little mesh window that would have kept it cool, but we are super insulated so that won't work.

So I'm planning to have a cool room within the larder, that will be cooled by refrigeration, and well insulated to retain its coolth.

Perhaps I could use natural ventilation, as you have done?

I like the mesh bulk-vegetable bins

 

I constructed a 'clamp' outside the back door last autumn. A few leftover construction blocks 50cm x 50cm x 10cm arranged to form a rectangular box, rendered, lined with leaky polythene, then fine mesh and a layer of sand. Carrots, parsnips and jerusalem artichokes were duly layered with more sand, cats told 'No, it's not a deluxe loo', and voila....the veg all sprouted Too warm? Too damp? We'll see how it goes this winter. At least I'll have some eager tenants if the veg don't keep.

 

I'm now wondering if I need to insulate the outside of the cool-room walls, so that the insides provide thermal mass?

Traditionally such rooms would have had slate shelves ... but I like the slatted wood - ideal for storing apples to stop them touching each other.

 

Thank you for your advices and comments

 

Its time for me to load my vegetable bins.

 

At some point I'm going to be build a store on my allotment. Can't wait to do it.

 

Other pictures about my cold room.

---> My walk in cold room