The bottom of the walls in the cellar was just the natural rock. It was soft and let water through. I could have tried to seal it with some waterproof coating and hoped the water would stay in the rock, not coming into the cellar. The risk with this is however that we would have got that terrible cellar smell of fungi living of locked in moist. I am sure you have seen visiting old castles and monasteries where they often have a part of the wall naked with no plaster or other coating. It does look nice, but it is not because of that they do it. It is a breathing hole for the wall that should let out the water that is climbing from the ground up into the wall. I needed a solution that would let my wall breath, but still look nice on the inside of the wine cellar.

The trick is to build a double wall of thin bricks (3cm) that has all vertical joints open so there is a box where air can circulate. That box is filled with gravel to support the wall so the soft rock does not erode when it gets damp. The gravel also makes it possible for the air to circulate and dry out the damp that might come from the rock. To be sure to transport all moist away we also made a little ditch in the concrete floor that ended in a whole trough the concrete down into the gravel under the concrete floor. Under the floor it is just ordinary soil anyway so a few more drops of water would not hurt anything.

On top of the box we built a lid of wood that formed a shelf where we could store things. The false brick wall was plastered over in the same way as we later did with the rest of the walls.