thinking about building a root cellar .my? is does your climit have any thing to do with a cellar being worth the time an money to build it ?i live in north east al. and as far as i know theres not the 1st cellar around here .wondering why .thats the reason behind be ? seems like the cellar would be a wise investment ? what do yall think.

I would love to have a root cellar but I suspect I would have major problems with the water table.
In this water short world our great city is actually trying to lower the water table to appease people that couldn't live without a basement.

recon why none of the old farms around here have a cellar?i know the put up lots of food .smoke house /salt boxes for hams,lots of canning .veges,meat (sausage) is only thing ive seen.

The house we are trying to get has a basement (not normal for Northern CA or CA in General) and when I was in it the other day it was probably low/mid 60s and it was in the mid 90s outside. Def works for keeping things cool.

One of my early Californ1a memories was my dad being "paid" by having our family eat with his customer's family in the cool, dark basement. The walls were lined with multi-colored jars of home-canned vegetables and fruit.

I had never seen a basement before.

Here in my area basements are very common. In the late 1960s and early 1970s there were whole neighborhoods of slab houses built. But it’s not a big percent of the overall homes that are slab (no basement) homes.

I would say if the water table is low enough go for it.

Also how far down is bedrock? I have a friend that put in an in-ground pool, they hit bedrock at 6-feet. He wanted a 9-foot pool, he settled on a 5-foot pool because of the much higher cost for going through all that rock.


Check on the bedrock depth.

Might want to check the ambient temperature pattern for your area for temperatures below ground. Root cellars need to be cool (not an expert but I think the cooler the better as long as it stays above freezing).

I grew up in SE PA and the house in which we lived had a ground floor built into a hillside, half was below ground, the other half not. We called this the basement as we had two living floors and an attic above it. The root cellar was dug below this basement so that it was 15-20 feet below ground at its deepest. It was dark, damp and full of spiders and I was scared to death to go down there. My mom stored her home made wine there.

This house was built in 1840 or so and was on a farm. The house I live in now has a full basement about 6-8 feet below ground and no root cellar. It was built in 1882 and is in town.

The farmhouse basement was cool enough, even in summer, that the bottles of Coke Cola stored there were a cool treat on a hot summer afternoon.

The present basement is where I keep my collection of tools and my sanity.

Andy

The man cave.

LOL on that!


Hang a sign


“No woman allowed”
Unless you are here to bring me a beer.

Tip: Put a dehumidifier in it. Otherwise tools rust in the man cave.