Cellaring and Earthquakes

Are your shelves free-standing? If not, I'm guessing you'd be safe nailing some heavy twine across each shelf to keep the bottles from ever falling off - I don't have any experience with this but I've seen it done in a number of cellar pictures.

 

This is why I keep mine in boxes on the floor. If you're in a dry part of the state, usual concerns about moisture are less of an issue. If you do have surface moisture, put them on palettes.

 

I keep most of my beers in boxes on wooden shelving that is built into the walls of the back room of the garage. Makes it hard to sift through the beers, but is more unlikely to fall off unless it is a really big earthquake. Unfortunately, I'm running out of space and also started sticking bottles on its side on top of some boxes which isn't too good of an idea.

For a while, I was considering getting some bungee cord and wrapping the open shelves with it if I wanted to take the bottles out of the boxes. Similar to the heavy twine idea above.

 

My cellar is a big plastic Tupperware type bin from Target that sits on the floor of an unused closet. The only thing that could happen is bottles may tip over inside the bin but they shouldn't be able to break. Plus, if they do break everything is contained so clean up wouldn't be all that bad.

 

I don't live in an area that is earthquake prone, but due to my paranoid tendencies, I store store my beers in plastic bins and put folded paper in between bottles for both stability and cushioning. You never know when an earthquake/tornado/supervolcano will hit your house some day..

 

Mine are in a wine fridge in the garage, so not to bad with a locked door. I wont have that much loss, dont have all that much qty out there.

Cheers!

 

Earthquakes smerthquakes, my beers are not scared of a little rocking and rolling.

 

This is what I do. I record what bottles are in which box both on the outside of the box and in a spreadsheet so I don't have to dig around to find certain bottles. I prefer the stability and limited light exposure of this method and don't feel like I'm missing out on looking at all my bottles on shelving.