If you want to give your wine collection the ideal environment in which to age properly there are two primary conditions that are needed; the proper temperature and humidity.Ensuring that you have a properly constructed and insulated wine cellar is the first step.The other critical thing that is needed is an affordable wine cellar cooling unit that can be integrated into the structure of your home and is powerful enough to adequately control the temperature and humidity of your wine cellar.
Self-contained and split system are the two main types of wine cooling units. As the name suggests self-contained units are one piece with both the evaporator and the condenser all in one while with a split system the evaporator is intalled in the wine cellar and the condenser mounted (usually) on an outside wall.
A couple advantages of self-contained cooling units are as follows:
Affordability
For equivalent strength units self-contained cooling units are less expensive than split system.
Ease of Installation
Probably the biggest advantage of self-contained units is that they can typically be installed quite easily with little modification to existing wall structures.The WhisperKOOL XLT series of self-contained wine cooling units do not require installation by an HVAC technician like most other units do as they are designed to fit between existing wall studs and no ducting is required. The WhisperKOOL 1600 is designed for a small wine cellar of up to 300 cubic feet while the WhisperKOOL XLT 4200 is capable of efficiently cooling a 1000 cubic foot wine cellar.
A couple advantages of split-system wine cooling units are:
Greater Installation Flexibility
Since all cooling units produce heat and make noise, if you have a rec room or some other often used living space adjoining your wine cellar you may want the flexibility offered by ducting a split system to another room or even outside.
Temperature Differential
Often a split system will be capable of cooling a wine cellar 10F to 20F cooler than a self-contained cooling unit. What this means is that if the unit vents outside and you live in a warm climate a split system may be the best solution.
Give some thought to these points and you will have a good idea as to which type of wine cooling unit may be best for you.