One of our forum users, strider3700, recently made a cold closet in his basement for storing food in the winter. A cold closet is a small room that is insulated to the rest of the house so it stays cold. So, its basically a fridge that runs for free during the winter.
He started out with a corner of his basement. After taking off the paneling, this is what he found. This is old fiberglass insulation. However, the construction was very poor as far as air infiltration goes.
Here are a few more shots of what he found after pulling the insulation out. He said there was a good breeze in a few places coming from miscellaneous cracks.
To fix this problem, Strider used expanding foam to fill the cracks and then installed rockwool insulation between the joists.
He then framed out a small area to create the closet. A door was added and also a vapor barrier was put up.
At this point he was able to start using the closet. To cool it down a bit faster, Strider added fan in one of the ducts to help circulate the air. He normally kicks the fan on for a short time after going into the closet to get the temperature back down. Outside temperatures have been between 10F / -12C and 40F / 5C. The cold closet has maintained temperatures between 39F / 4C and 48F / 9C. The target temperature of the closet was 39F / 4C to 46F / 8C. So, the closet is working darn near perfectly.
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