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Hi Everyone!  Miss you all but have not been making cheese.  that'll change in the spring when I have milk again. 

In the meantime, someone drew my attention to this very cool (but unfortunately very expensive) cave option.

http://www.dezeen.com/2015/10/23/weltevree-groundfridge-floris-schoonderbeek-underground-electricity-free-fridge-dutch-design-award-week-2015/

Let me know what you think?  I'd love one or two.....and I wonder what could be done to slightly change temp and humidity parameters for successful aging of different styles of cheese.

Ohhh I want one!

Right, me too!!!!  Imagine how easy to clean, imagine having 3.....1 for hard cheese, 1 for blue and 1 for softer cheeses.  I guess I have to imagine a winning lottery ticket first.  But it does have me thinking about precast concrete options.

Seems like the rounded shape would be perfect to avoid condensation dripping as well! I could not figure out what the water spigot was for in the one illustration.

Very cool I wonder how they get air flow?

I had thought about using a septic tank as a prefab cheese cave , I have never bought one but I suspect they are not too costly in areas where they are needed.

Gregore, I have thought about the septic tank option too....and there are preformed concrete stairs available also so I've wondering about choosing precast pieces that would be easy to turn into a cave complete with stairs.   

Oh wow! I love this prefab concept!!

So cool! Thanks for sharing!

I though how cool it would be  if and when we redo the drive way to  drop a septic tank under there and run some stairs down . Surprisingly my wife thought it was a cool idea too.

Would have to figure out the venting  but that should not be too hard.

With the cost of land here in Santa Barbara one has to be more clever with storage  and a cheese fridge uses up valuable real estate , so right now we only have a 6 cf

Speaking of which Costco has a 155 bottle wine fridge for $999

I think I have almost convinced the wife it would be a good idea as she could keep some of her pickles and kombucha in there too.

If you google something like "pre-cast concrete root cellars" you'll get a chance to scroll through a LOT of images and they will lead you to some articles about different ways to use septic tanks and pre-cast concrete panels for a cheese or root cellar.  Mother Earth News will show up links to a couple of articles and the venting issue is discussed.  Good luck!

For anyone considering doing something like using a septic tank, please be safe about it. You are creating a confined space (for those that don't know what this is you can read about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confined_space). You absolutely must have a way to provide adequate air circulation and exchange. Aging cheeses can produce gases which can affect air quality. A way to monitor air quality would probably be a good idea too in case something fails.


Susan