Has anyone built a root cellar

We do NOt have a garage or basement. My husband and I are discussing building an outdoor rootcellar in one of our hilly areas. Has anyone done this? I am interested in it as a place to put plants such as brugs as much as food. You would need earth around alot of it to hold temp but sturdy enough so if one of the goats ran over the top (or me chasing one of them ) we wouldnt fall thru :)
charlottea

I have listed several sites for information. I hope you find something which fills your needs.
Gary/Louisville

Return of the Root Cellars... an insulated door can be installed leading into the cellar. ... here is from the book, "ROOT CELLARING" (Mike ... Though not intended for tribulation survival,
http://www.tribwatch.com/rootcell.htm


The Survival Food-Preservation Library Online (This is a great resource for many things.)
http://www.frugalsquirrels.com/survival-lib/survival-food.html


Michigan State University Extension-Plans for a Potato Cellar. ... Root Cellars-Do away with the fridge and build a root cellar. It can double as a survival shelter
http://www.earth-house.com/provisions/rootcellar/rootcellar.html

Hmmmm, Pickens. Gets cold but not that cold. Hilly but not that hilly.

I haven't looked at the links Gary posted above, but I do have lots of experience with root cellars. The easiest would be to dig out a large "hole" in a hillside and install a door. But that would be a dark space. Do brugs need any light over the winter months?

Charlotte/Darius, If she has a good incline on the hillside she might excavate enough space for the Root Celler and just next to it another space with a separate door with good insulated door with double/tripple windowpanes. The plant space could maintain a different level of temp and moisture than that of the root celler.

When I was a child, I remember my grandparents storing root vegetables and cabbages in the ground with a heavy tarp over them. There was sand around the vegetables and about ten or twelve inches of soil on top of the tarp. I also enjoyed going to their spring fed "spring house" especially in the summer because it stayed so cool there. Milk, butter and eggs were stored there and I don't remember what other things they had there.
Gary/Louisville

Yes, Gary, my grandmother had a house/shelter buried in the ground on 3 sides with some type of roof that could be pulled back on nice days. She kept her flowers in there and I remember them looking quite bad but they did survive.
We have a natural spring here also, no house over it but they (my husband's grandmother) did store their bottles of milk in the spring. We added the rock walls years later.
charlotte

Man, if I had a spring, I'd have a spring house in a New York minute!

I still can remember (and feel) how the spring house my grandmother had was on a hot summer day when I was sent to fetch cream. So wonderfully cool, but even more that that and I cannot describe waht it really was.

Lizh, who is a subscriber here, has a large sink/tub on her back porch that her spring runs through. They keep cold drinks in it, and it provides a fresh cold drink of water, too, anytime you walk out onto the porch.

Ours is so cold that you can not keep your bare foot in it for very long. We used to put watermelons in it to cool before eating.
charlotteda