California Cooler

juno2008

12 years ago

We are starting a kitchen redesign right now on our NorCal bungalow, and the custom cabinet guy is coming to do some measuring on Monday. I have my heart set on adding a California cooler in a corner section of cabinets. I've found little guidance online for adding one into a contemporary re-do. Linda Powell's bungalow books have a quick note or two on old ones. So I have a few questions.

Venting. In the bungalow books, there's one that's vented to the basement and up through the attic. Lots of the old bungalows around here have the exterior venting for their coolers still visible, and all of them have two vents on the side of the house (don't know if they also vent to the basement). My husband is nixing cutting any holes in the roof, so I'll have to vent out the side for the upper vent no matter what. We can either vent near the floor to the outside for the bottom vent or vent directly to our full, unfinished basement. I think a pro of venting to the basement is that the air will be pretty consistently cool (not warm or freezing) year round. Perfect for wine and root storage and better as far as temp. differential with the rest of the kitchen. I'm worried about creating a fire chimney though. Do you think this would ever get past the building code? I'm not very familiar with those requirements. Could we mitigate with some sort of insulation or fireproofing?

Insulation. I'm guessing the cabinet guy might have some ideas, but does anyone know how we might go about insulating to avoid losing our heat out of this cabinet? We dont' have AC, so it should only be an issue half the year.

Any other resources I can check out about how to have one of these things maybe with a few updates for energy efficiency and fire safety? I have some similar questions about a laundry chute I'd like to add for our basement laundry, but I'm guessing there are some modern pre-fab units out there for chutes. Any info for those would also be much appreciated.

Featured Answer

artemis78

12 years ago

Ours is original to our house, but we restored it in a kitchen remodel a few years ago. It was designed with two vents: one on the floor of the cooler, which goes to our unfinished basement, and one on the side wall of the house (back of the cooler cabinet) which goes outside. For all practical purposes, the outside vent is framed as a small window, except that it has wood slats instead of glass. It's structurally a teeny little room--door frame and all. The door is the same weight/thickness as a room door would be (1 3/8" I think?) as opposed to being more like a cabinet. We had one side of it open since we took a wall down, and added insulation there before plastering it back up. One of these days I'll weatherproof it as well for more insulation, but it works beautifully as is. It's flush inset. I imagine we may have been grandfathered in anyway since it was existing, but it never raised any concerns at all with respect to inspections.

We're in the SF Bay Area, and the cooler generally stays about 10-15 degrees below room temperature (sometimes colder in the winter). It's been great for oils, spices, root vegetables, baking staples that benefit from cooler temps, etc. Feel free to send me a message if you want more info or photos. (There also used to be an Instructables site up by someone who had built a new one from scratch--haven't looked for it in many years so not sure if it's still out there!) Good luck--we designed our remodel around our cooler, much to the chagrin of some of the kitchen designers we talked to who thought I was nuts--three years later, I am so happy we did it!

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Comments (6)

snoonyb
12 years ago
Generally, the cabinet itself will be a sealed box, so only the vent penetrations will need to be correctly installed.

The door/s can be weather-striped, flush overlay is easiest.

A basement is not usually considered a individually fire protected space.
juno2008
Original Author
12 years ago
Thanks snoonyb. I have no idea what an "individually fire proected space" means!! :( I just know from my reading about laundry chutes that I might run into problems under some building codes. Does that mean that venting to the basement would be OK/advisable?

When you say "the cabinet itself will be a sealed box," do you mean there is some sort of unit we can buy, or do I have to give some special instruction to the cabinet maker? Sorry to hear about overlay being easier; we'd planned for inset all over. I'll have to talk with the cabinet maker about it.
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snoonyb
12 years ago
A residential dwelling, with an attached garage, is required to have a maintained 1hr fire separation from the garage.

Unless you have a carbon fuel powered generator in your basement, it is considered part of the building envelope.

Laundry chutes are a different story than your proposed cooler venting which is up and out too fresh air, where a laundry chute is interior and is accessible to sleeping rooms.

Custom cabinets are a complete box with the only openings being where the top and bottom vents are, and the door.

You can also seal inset doors by adding an interior stop or an additional wall, ceiling and floor thickness. You will also need to install a positive latch to compensate for fluctuating air pressures.
artemis78
12 years ago
Hi Juno2008--got your message and would love to share our photos, but your preferences are set to hide your email address so I can't respond! If you want to change the preference setting and then send a new GW message it should let me reply, or you can just send a message to let me know what your email address is. :)
juno2008
Original Author
12 years ago
Hi artemis78,

I realized that about 5 minutes after I messaged you and changed them, but maybe I changed them incorrectly! I'll also message you my e-mail.