For the avid wine collector there is nothing more important than ensuring that your wine has a chance to age in an environment that is maintained at the proper temperature and humidity.The first thing you need to accomplish this is a properly constructed and insulated wine cellar.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.
There are basically two different styles of wine cooling units; self-contained and split-system. 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. Depending on the size of your wine cellar the xlt series likely has a unit for the job. For example; for a small wine cellar of up to 300 cubic feet there is the WhisperKOOL 1600 and for wine cellars up to 1000 cubic feet there is the WhisperKOOL XLT 4200.
A couple advantages of split-system wine cooling units are:
Greater Installation Flexibility
Wine cooling units produce heat and make noise. Split system units tend to be a little quieter than self-contained units and can also be vented outside or to a room where these issues will not impact any living areas.
Temperature Differential
Often a split system will be capable of cooling a wine cellar 10F to 20F cooler than a self-contained cooling unit. Therefore, if you live in a warm climate and the cooling unit vents outside a split system is probably the best solution.
These general observations should help you decide if a self-contained cooling unit is the right solution for you.