This year, for Christmas, my husband decided to build me a root cellar. More the size of a root closet, it has 2 sets of shelves (enough to hold vegetables through the winter for us and then some), and it doesn't take up too much space in our basement. It occupies the northeast corner where the old oil tank used to be (before we converted to gas). Part of the pipe from the tank which is in the upper part of the exterior wall is still in place, allowing for ventilation. The interior walls and ceiling are insulated. An old door which was not necessary after some renovations is being reused as the entry door into our root cellar. The temperature remained in the mid 40's until we hit a cold snap of single digit temps and even getting below zero. During this time, it is holding consistently at 38 degrees while the rest of the basement stays around 60 degrees.
