We have a 15" model. Not sure of the model number right now. While it makes more noise than our regular fridge, it certainly makes less noise than our previous regular GE fridge nor would I describe it as noisy. We have an open kitchen and for the most part we barely notice it. Most noticable would be the click-on noise. I'm not familiar with other brands so I can't compare.

Springtime homes - I really really appreciate your feedback, however you are not entirely correct. I have been reading up on how to set this up and the upper 1/3 to 1/2 of the foundation needs to be insulated to prevent heat transferring from the upper parts of the soil and the exterior foundation. Unfortunately we are forced to either have this at the west or east side of the foundation (one wall) so that creates additional difficulties. It is the bottom portion of the wall and the floor itself that keeps the room cool. The room itself will be close to air tight due to a vapor barrier and a well insulated exterior door entering the room. The walls shared with the house and the ceiling will be VERY will insulated, to the highest R value that we can fit into the space! :) I'm really curious if there is anyone on GardenWeb who has built a passive wine cellar themselves and if they have any specific tips beyond what is standard. There are 3 main questions I have as well. 1. For instance. I wonder if there is a way to separate the concrete floor from the rest of the basement while the foundation is being laid so that there is not any heat transfer through the concrete in the rest of the basement? 2. If one (or two) of the exterior walls are completely under the house and not shared the the rest of the homes foundation, then would their be any difference in how you insulate the concrete from the exterior? 3. And, should I plan for two or three exterior walls? The problem with planning three is that it would make it very difficult to then add a cooling system if this didn't end up working.

I usually accept the offer, but make it something easy. Depends on who it is. A lot of my friends who offer to bring something like to cook and share. Plus they know I work and am busy and they don't mind pitching in to help. So for those people it varies--dessert, side dish, appetizer, whatever they feel like making, we kind of discuss what I am making and they decide. But if it is someone I don't know and there is nothing easy I need, and if I get the feeling they are just going through the motions, then I would probably politely decline. I'm the same way as a guest, if it's someone I don't know well, I usually don't ask about bringing anything, but do bring something foodie as a hostess gift, something they can eat later. That's why I got into canning, lol! I often bring them a jar of jam or salsa, if it's not wine or flowers. On the other hand, if it is a good friend whom I know is just as harried as me, I'll offer to bring the dessert, bread, beverages or whatever if they need me to. BTW, if you ever find yourself in that situation, offering to bring pie is a great idea. By buying precut frozen fruits and a pre-made pie crust, you can get a "homeade" pie in the oven in about 10 min. Fresh baked "homeade" pie with very little effort. I have a recipe for raspberry peach pie that is my "go to" for that effect. Just be careful, some pre-made pie is made with lard, which is fine as long as you're not going to a Jewish party!! :)

what is the ambient temperature of the surrounding room? The assumption is that since it's in your basement, your floor above will be in a heated room - do you heat your basement too? Is your basement entirely subterranean or do you have 3 ft windows in it like mine? If you are entirely subterranean, and your ground temp is OK. you may not have to insulate the floor. Remember that it can be a heat sink and insulating it can actually raise the temp of the interior space. If your configuration is like I described, you need most insullation on the ceiling. The vibrations from your dishwasher won't be a problem anyhow - the dishwasher is above and it's hard to imagine how it would shake the floor of the wine cellar. I simply have the same concrete floor as the rest of the basement. My cellar is for storage, so I just wanted it to be functional. It's about the same size as you describe. Vapor barriers can be something to think about. If you have a large difference in temp between your cellar and the surrounding space, you can get condensation. in an unheated basement, the problem is more likely against the ceiling than the walls, but each place is different. Generally you put the vapor barrier against the warm side, but that's not a brilliant idea for a ceiling, especially if your joists and flooring is wood, which is probably the case. I don't understand your question about paint. What is your concern? Also, remember that greenboard doesn't really insulate all that well. I was worried about flooding in the basement even though we've never had any, so I used wonderboard, or cement board, like you would use for a bathroom. I also have six inch walls so I could put a lot of insullation in, and I built my own door which is also six inches. If you use extruded polystyrene, you get the maximum insulation per square inch. Thermax, which has foil on one or both sides, is slightly better but deteriorates over time and there is some literature about toxins, so rather than worry about any of that, I just used polystyrene. I also built my own wine racks. If you use individual racking, you lose a lot of space to air, but that is the most convenient for looking at your bottles. If you use some kind of bin, Rhone shaped bottles and anything that's slightly weird can be a real pain to stack. So I made shelves. A Bordeaux bottle is 3" diameter, a Burgundy bottle is about 3 1/4", but some of the Rhones are a little larger and things like Turley, or Champagne, or some Beaujolais, are even larger. So I made shelves spaced at 3 1/2 inches, with a few at the bottom that are 4" and the top which is about 5" for anything weird. That was the compromise that allowed me to get the maximum bottles with the least amount of lost space. Bins are better but as I said, a pain. I did one wall with bins and probably wouldn't do that again. For cooling, you have a lot of options. You can do a split system. You can get a Whisperkool or Breezeaire or something similar. But remember, those coolers are simply air conditioners. AC units don't go down below 65 or so because they'll ice up. So the compressors are sized slightly differently and the evaporation coils are sized slightly differently than the wine chiller units. If you got your AC to go to 60 or below, you wouldn't have adequate evaporation. So what to do? Get a larger unit. The smallest room AC is about 3000 BTU, or 5000 BTU, which is far more than you need to get that small room cool. If you trick it, you can get it to cool to the 50s or so and you're in good shape. I just bought a $99 Samsung and the temp is around 59 - 62 degrees F. You can pull the thermostat wire thru the grill, which gets you about 5 degrees right there, and you can tape a small resistor to it that gets you another few degrees, and you spent $99 for a cooling system that works fine. I'm not going to get into an engineering description of cooling systems, but people modify big ACs for meat lockers if they're hunters, and it actually works pretty good for a wine cellar. But a spare in case you burn it out and use the savings for more wine.