Scafool, you bring up several valid points.

On this property, the garage is old (1902), and the owners installed a 'fruit room' between the back wall of the garage and the adjoining little garden tool room. Both the fruit and garden tool rooms are only 4' wide, and run the width of the garage. The fruit room is heavily insulated and doesn't freeze. There are shelves on both long walls.

For someone with a bit of property, they could build one of Nader Khalili's sandbag shelters: Mark a circle about 10' in diameter on level ground, dig within the circle, fill regular sandbags with the soil removed from the circle. Lay the sandbags just outside the circle, ends butted together, leaving an opening for a door. Lay two rows of barbed wire on top of each sandbag layer. Gradually move the sandbag layers inward to form a dome. Add a wood frame and a door. Almost half will be underground where the soil stays cool. Cover the dome with either a large sheet of heavy plastic that extends beyond the dome, or coat with an inch or so of concrete. Cover all with a thick layer of soil and plant with something that has a dense root system, like perennial clover.

This shelter could also be used as an emergency fire shelter, but you would have to build a protective dogleg barrier of rock/concrete or brick/mortar in front of the door to protect it from heat.

But it should make a great root cellar.

Sue

Interesting, Sue. I've always thought that his Super Adobe shelters had a lot of merit, although they're about as aesthetically pleasing as a small bee hive!

I know it's going to vary by climate and location, but how deep do you think you'd have to dig to make an effective root cellar using this method? I guess I'm wondering if maybe it doesn't have to be as deep as what I think a traditional root cellar has to be. Or maybe my idea of a root cellar being something that you physically take stairs down into, like a basement, is also not an accurate idea either?

Arney, that would likely depend on where you live. Frost lines, at least here in New England, RARELY extend beyond the first 6" of earth. Once you get through that, the ground is no longer frozen. But, our root cellars here are actual cellars; in MA, a house is required to have a basement as part of the building code, with a couple exceptions (apt buildings & modular homes being two of them). Most older homes have basements with packed dirt floors-houses built, say, before the 50's. Granted, most folks these days likely pave it over with cement, to finish it, but I recall the house I grew up in having packed earth floors, and my feet ALWAYS being dirty-getting yelled at for tracking dirt from the cellar through the rest of the house was a daily occurence!