The cabinet I started last April and put off until cold weather just got finished. The idea is to create a space to "put up" vegetables for the winter. I've been looking at the cut-out in our very thick basement wall for quite a while wondering what to do, and after reading a book on root cellaring, it dawned on me that four of the six walls would be below ground, just like a root cellar. In the end, only a ceiling and a front with doors needed to be built and insulated.
The problem was how to introduce cold air into the cabinet, and the solution was to bore holes through the basement window which is just above it, plumb them down to the lower part of the cabinet, and then bore a couple of vent holes in the top to encourage a natural convection current. The division down the middle is not essential, but I want to store apples, potatoes and carrots for the winter. The book says that apples should not be stored near potatoes since the apples give off ethylene gases which promote sprouting in the potatoes. So, the solution was to build the partition wall so apples could be on one side, and the carrots and potatoes could be on the other.
Just in case you are wondering why there is only one pipe on the left side, and two on the right, it's because I broke my drill (and nearly my wrist) trying to bore the hole on the far left due to a loose piece of wood flopping around inside the window sill! I guess one pipe will have to do on the left side!
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