Wine Cabinet Installation: Who Fits It and What It Needs

Two jobs that get treated as one

Assembly is joining the modules. Installation is levelling, fixing, power, condensate, and proving the unit holds its band in the room it is actually in.

The second decides whether the cabinet works, and it depends on things nobody photographed when the order was placed.

Who can do it

Three arrangements, and the choice matters less than the drawing behind it.

• Your own installer, working from our numbered drawing. This is the default, and it keeps the schedule in your hands.
• Our team on site, in countries where travel is straightforward. The trip is quoted per project and invoiced separately from the cabinet.
• Remote supervision by video call, at no charge. It works better than it sounds, because the drawing already carries the module numbers and the sequence.

What has to be ready before the crate is opened

Six things. If one of them is missing, the visit is spent waiting.

• A floor line that is level, and an agreed allowance for how far out it may be.
• The wall finished and painted, because a fitted run rarely comes off undamaged.
• The opening measured three ways — at the floor, at mid height and at the top — because a wall can be straight and still be out of plumb.
• Power on its own circuit, at the position on the drawing rather than at the nearest socket.
• A condensate route, or a decision that the unit will evaporate it.
• A way in: door widths, stair turns, lift size, and somewhere to set the crate down at the right level.

Fixing, and the question nobody asks early

A floor-standing run carries its load down to the floor, and the wall fixing only stops it tipping. A wall-hung rack carries everything into the wall, and the fixings stop being hardware and become structure.

On masonry this is simple. On a stud wall it is a matter of hitting studs or adding a substrate, and adding a substrate after the wall is decorated is a decorating job rather than a fixing job.

Which is why the first question about a wall-hung unit is what is behind the plaster, not how many bottles it holds.

Commissioning a cooled run

The joinery is finished before the cooling starts, and the room is closed and sealed first. Then power on, controller set, doors shut, and let it reach the set point.

What is being checked is not that it gets cold. It is that it reaches the band without the unit running continuously, and that nothing condenses where it should not be.

It is also when the doors are checked a second time. A door that lined up at assembly can be out at operating temperature, because the frame moves as it cools.

Where our responsibility ends

Ours covers the cabinet, its cooling, its seal and its function. Your installer covers the opening, the wall, the floor, the power and the condensate route.

When something is wrong at handover, the fastest way to resolve it is to ask which of those two lists it falls under. Almost every dispute is a line item in the wrong list rather than a defect.

Installation warranty applies to projects where we send people to site. It does not extend to a cabinet fitted by someone else, not as a restriction but because we cannot inspect what we did not see done.