I've never seen a root cellar outside of photos.

Do you have a root cellar? Have you ever had one?

How effective are they? If you're a gardener, would it be worth it to build one that would be freestanding (no basement options)?

Any useful info or thought are welcome.

Sue

I have never had a real live root cellar, the underground type that is. The guy we bought our home from built a "cold room" onto the side of the attached garage. 'Bout the size of a walk in closet, thick insulation all around, shelves on all walls, a window air conditioner built into one wall. Unless the A/C is on about nine months out of the year (we are talking central CA here), it is worthless for anything but dry and canned goods. And running that A/C all the time can get expensive. Other than that, I think you need to dig a hole in the backyard...

Sue,

The house I grew up in had a root cellar off the basement. It's ceiling was about 3-4 feet under ground, the sides had a layer of cement and the floor was dirt. This was in Minnestoa and during the summer it stayed quite cool (dad would store worms in there, mom would store fresh fruit and veggies). In the winter mom would store all here flower bulbs along with any fruit/veggies. It worked well, the temperature really did stay fairly constant, about 60-65F year-round.

Here in Texas there's a "living history" farm nearby and they have root cellar like what you are thinking of. They dug down into the earth about four feet, built a wooden room, then piled all the dirt back on top, along with even more dirt to make walls over five feet thick. The whole thing is about 6' tall by 10' long by 7' wide. I've been in it in hot weather and it might be 10F cooler which still puts it in the 80s. It's better than nothing but not by much.

Conditions in your area may not be as hot and you'll get better results. Sidenote: make sure you have good drainage or a sump pump to keep the water out.

-Blast

My experience with root cellars is those of the underground variety. Any basement area that can be closed off from heat-producing appliances (furnace, dryer, etc.) will work to some extent. It is amazing the extent to which garden produce, especially root vegetables, will keep in one. Even apples have an extended life in a good root cellar.

The one exception was my great uncle's farm in Kentucky that had a spring house - basically a heavy stone hut built over the point where a natural spring bubbled out of the hillside. The constant flow of cold water through a channel in the floor kept it very cool even in the middle of summer.

I suppose you could dig a root celler outside the house and install a bulkhead door, but Blast's point about keeping out groundwater is very well taken.

Aside from that, I would think that a free-standing root cellar would basically have to be a walk-in cooler with the temperature maintained at about 50 to 55 degrees, with all the resulting energy requirements.

I have always called it “Fruit Room”, probable because they are used to store canned and bottled goods. I have one in my basement that is actually under the porch, it stays cool in the summer and I do not need to worry about things freezing in the winter. We store food and water in it.
My parents had a sand pit (a section in the back, cornered off with about 4” of sand in the bottom) in their Fruit Room to store the fresh vegetables they grew during the summer. Potatoes with the dirt left on them could be stored all winter and apples and squash for a couple months.

-John