This water is a byproduct of your cooling system stripping excess humidity from the air inside your cellar. This feature was added to protect your collection from the side effects of long-term storage in a high humidity environment.

How CellarCool Systems Manage Cellar Humidity.

The key difference between CellarCool systems and traditional air conditioner units is the maintenance of well-conditioned humidity. Regular air conditioning units are designed to cool as quickly as possible. As a result, humidity is removed below acceptable wine storage levels. CellarCool achieves optimal results by gently cooling the air within your cellar at a slower rate, thus maintaining optimal humidity levels for the long-term storage of fine wines.

Producing Too Much Water?

In high humidity areas (75%-90% relative humidity) of the country, moisture will frequently travel through the walls (especially in underground applications where materials like concrete or cinderblock are used) and enter the cellar. When creating your wine storage area, it is crucial to research your area’s climate to identify potential areas of concern. We suggest maintaining humidity levels near 55% since higher humidity levels can contradict the cooling process and make it harder to maintain temperature.

What Can You Do To Prepare Your Cellar For Humidity?

Vapor Barrier – 

When building your cellar, a vapor barrier is necessary for the efficient cooling of the cellar environment. The barrier acts as a defense to unwanted moisture coming in or escaping out of your wine cellar environment.

Sealing Your Cellar –

Properly sealing your cellar environment will prevent unwanted humidity from leaking into your cellar and causing your unit to expend more of its capacity to work to strip this excess moisture. Areas of concern are as follows: doors, wall joints, and the cellar’s flooring, & ceiling sealing seal. These areas should all be properly sealed with recommended materials.

An Important Note To Keep In Mind.

When a cooling unit strips excess humidity out of the air within the cellar, it is using a percentage of its overall capacity to do that. For example, if your system was rated to run 50% of the time to cool the heat load of the cellar, it will use an additional 10%-20% of its capacity to work to strip the unwanted humidity from the air, when proper humidity prevention methods are not taken. This is extremely important to note when pertaining to the runtime of your system and the amount of liquid drainage from your cooling system.

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Occasionally, the evaporator coil of a wine cellar cooling unit may ice up. This can happen for several reasons.

In self-contained cooling units, a lack of ventilation may be to blame. The unit blows cold air into the room. If this air has no place to circulate (if the front of the unit is blocked or obstructed), the cold air will circulate back into the unit, chilling the coil to lower temperatures. This can trigger the formation of ice on the coil and on other surfaces. Clogged filters can also reduce airflow over the coils.

In split systems, overcharging can be an issue. For example, if the unit is charged with too much refrigerant, the coil will become colder than intended. This can lead to the formation of ice on the coil.

Coil ice can be a severe problem. Ice begets more ice. Eventually, the entire evaporator coil may be encased in a solid block of ice. This can damage the cooling unit. The fan(s) will strain to pull air through the ice-clogged coil and may overheat. The unit may run continuously, never shutting off, straining the compressor and other components, eventually leading to unit failure.

Even if the unit has an automatic shutoff, what follows could also be tragic. When the block of ice melts, water will almost certainly leak out of the unit, potentially damaging the interior of the unit, wine labels, racking, and walls.

Preventing Coil Ice

Customers can help ensure that their self-contained units will not develop ice on their evaporator coils. By ensuring that their unit has at least three feet of clearance on all sides (five feet is ideal), customers can prevent supply air from recirculating. This will go a long way towards preventing coil ice. Adequate ventilation is vital to the correct operation of CellarCool and other HVAC units.

Technicians can also help ensure that split systems and self-contained units do not develop coil ice by not overcharging the system.

Conclusion

To conclude, both poor installation and improper charging procedures can cause coil ice to form. To prevent damage to your unit and wine cellar, make sure your self-contained unit has adequate ventilation. Decorative grilles and other objects can obstruct airflow and cause ice to form on the evaporator coil. For split systems, make sure that the unit is not overcharged. Charging charts are included with the condensing units of each CellarCool split system. These charts explain how to properly charge CellarCool split systems. Adherence to these charts should prevent overcharging issues.

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