Setting up shop at new house

[myoung84]

I am moving soon and will have to put all of my sage stuff somewhere, of course. I have the sage PC, UPS, and 2 DTV boxes and I would also like to put the router, switch, and cable modem with the sage stuff. Right now this is all next to my desk and it looks very cluttered. I am thinking of putting all of it in a closet or possibly the garage. I am concerned however with the heat with everything when locked up in a closet and I don't really want a PC just sitting on a shelf in the garage for fear of it getting snatched while the garage is open. I am going to wire the entire house with CAT5e and I will have approximately 6 runs of network cable that will also need to go to the sage location to the router and switch. Another concern is having to run electricity to the closet if I go that route, which really wont be too bad since I'll be in the attic running network cable and coax from the satellite.

So, after all that rambling, what is everyone else doing with larger setups? The Sage PC can be run from remote desktop, so no monitor or keyboard will be required.

[GKusnick]

I have all my AV gear (including Sage) in a rack in a closet, with a small air conditioner mounted in the ceiling and venting to the outside.

[Djc208]

I moved all my media wiring, network equipment, and Sage to a closet as well. Originally it was all on a high shelf but the heat issue was a problem. I put a vent into the attic to exhaust hot air and it helped, but eventually I moved the CPU to the bottom of the closet for cooler air the vent didn't move enough air.

I think ultimatly I may need to install an exhaust fan onto the atic vent to pull the hot air out of the closet. It works well because it's a central location in the house making all the runs shorter and is easily accessed from the attic, but it does require more work and money in cooling systems plus you lose storage space in the closet.

I don't have an attached garage to put it in, not to mention in VA it gets too hot to leave it in an un-conditioned garage in the summer. If you did go the garage route you could always put it in some sort of lock box to protect it from prying eyes (or hands) and stray flying objects, plus mounting it on a wall somewhere is usually more acceptable and a good use of space, but it's also a dirtier and harsher environment than inside the house usually.

[bcjenkins]

Dig a basement! I put mine in the mechanical room in the basement.

B

[Fuzzy]

My 'office' as it were was actually a bedroom. I built a cabinet in one end of the closet and ducted it into the attic with an inline blower. The air only enters the cabinet in one spot, and that is served with a standard sized Furnace filter. This keeps the computer from accumulating the 'dust' that they normally get. I am in the process of moving both my other computers into this cabinet as well, and will be baffling the front and back half of the computers seperate (back on the exhaust, front on the supply). This will prevent one computer from sucking in the hot exhaust of another. In the winter, i plan on venting the exhaust back into the house for heating purposes (most my winters, this would actually provide enough heat by itself).

[myoung84]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

My 'office' as it were was actually a bedroom. I built a cabinet in one end of the closet and ducted it into the attic with an inline blower. The air only enters the cabinet in one spot, and that is served with a standard sized Furnace filter. This keeps the computer from accumulating the 'dust' that they normally get. I am in the process of moving both my other computers into this cabinet as well, and will be baffling the front and back half of the computers seperate (back on the exhaust, front on the supply). This will prevent one computer from sucking in the hot exhaust of another. In the winter, i plan on venting the exhaust back into the house for heating purposes (most my winters, this would actually provide enough heat by itself).

I really did not want to run ducts to the attic or anything if I could keep from it. If I do that, what kind of in-line blower did you use? Got any links? I was looking at bathroom exhaust fans for the ceiling but I don't think those would be good for continuous duty.

These are all very good ideas.

[davephan]

The garage is probably not a good location because of the summer heat, unless the garage is air-conditioned! In Minnesota, my garage gets very hot most of the summer. Since your climate is hotter, the garage is way too hot for a computer.

I have thought about moving my SageTV computer to the basement and remote controlling it with long KVM and USB cables with extender devices. It would be nice to have a setup with only a monitor, keyboard, and mouse - very quiet and less clutter.

I think your only option is a closet or some other out of the way or a room that is rarely used.

Dave

[CollinR]

x2 garage is totally out!


If you want to vent the closet just run a duct to the HVAC return, this will suck the air back through the system rather then wasting AC to the attic o outside.


I plan to convert my rack to water cooled with 2 heat exchangers. One will be in the AC return ducting so in the winter I can use the heat from the rack to my advantage. The second exchanger buried in my crawlspace so in the summer I can use the earth as my heatsink.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by myoung84

I really did not want to run ducts to the attic or anything if I could keep from it. If I do that, what kind of in-line blower did you use? Got any links? I was looking at bathroom exhaust fans for the ceiling but I don't think those would be good for continuous duty.

These are all very good ideas.

Cheap in-duct fan from Home Depot. They've for 4, 6 and 8" models. They're cheap, but noisy (why I have mine in the attic).

http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/...atalogId=10053

Originally Posted by CollinR

If you want to vent the closet just run a duct to the HVAC return, this will suck the air back through the system rather then wasting AC to the attic o outside.

This would actually keep the heat IN your house. The idea is to get the heat OUT of the house. It really depends on the heat level you're talking about. If your exhausted air is hotter than the outside air (which mine is most of the time) then it is better to put taht heat outside and bring the cooler outside air in as makeup. If your outside air is hotter than the closet exhaust, then your method would be a little ahead.

Originally Posted by CollinR

I plan to convert my rack to water cooled with 2 heat exchangers. One will be in the AC return ducting so in the winter I can use the heat from the rack to my advantage. The second exchanger buried in my crawlspace so in the summer I can use the earth as my heatsink.

This is definately the most efficient method... but like most things.. a lot more work.. :-)

[myoung84]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Cheap in-duct fan from Home Depot. They've for 4, 6 and 8" models. They're cheap, but noisy (why I have mine in the attic).

http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/...atalogId=10053

I think I might go with this method with a vent in the ceiling. What size fan are you using? Do you have yours running 24/7 without issues? I would hate for this to catch my attic on fire.

[Fuzzy]

hehe, I wouldnt' worry about it catching on fire.. more likely if it DID fail, it would just freeze up. I've got the 6" model which seems to do okay. I need to redo some of the ducting in my attic for it though, as I have a Whole house fan that blows form the hallway into the attic, and pushes a LOT harder than this little guy, which causes it to backflow into my cabinet.. slight oversight.. :-) I'm going to duct it instead to the inlet plenum of the whole house fan, so when the fan is off, it is basically ducted to the attic, when the fan is on, it will actually be pulling and assisting my little 6"er.

[sic0048]

Putting a fan to vent the hot air is only half the solution. You have to allow a way for air (hopefully cooler air) to ENTER the closet. So all you guys who have fans in the closet that are not getting the mileage you though you would - you need to make sure you have good air flow into the space. A fan can only suck air out of a space as quickly as it is entering a space.

If you are venting the air into the attic, you also have to make sure it can get out of the attic (to the outside) as quickly as you are venting it into the attic as well. However, most attics are large enough that they will be able to handle load of a small fan venting from the closet without any problems or additional venting.

Most of the time, you will need to put a vent near the bottom of the door of the closet to allow air to flow into the closet.

[Fuzzy]

As I had mentioned, I have a filtered inlet on my cabinet that uses a standard furnace style filter. Works quite well, and gets MIGHTY dusty...

[Humanzee]

Originally Posted by sic0048

Most of the time, you will need to put a vent near the bottom of the door of the closet to allow air to flow into the closet.

Because a lot of new homes are really air tight, you'll frequently see doors that appear to be shorter than you'd expect. This leaves an inch gap or so at the bottom of the door for air to circulate. If you have a 6"x9" exhaust vent in your server room that's 54 square inches. So for a 28 inch door you could cut the bottom to leave a 1.9 inch gap which approximately equals the vent area. 1.9 inches looks like a lot but my look better than adding another vent, depends on your taste.

Of course its not all as simple as that. The cool air coming in at the bottom of the door is more dense so that deducts the size needed, the rectangular shape increases perimeter length and thus the surface drag which would theoretically increase the area needed for incoming air and any screen or filter on any vent will reduce the effective CFM changing the math again. But it is a good rule of thumb to have the incoming and exiting area's equal to each other.

It's finally gotten warm enough in Seattle to think about this myself. Usually our PC's are used as supplemental heat sources here.

[sic0048]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

As I had mentioned, I have a filtered inlet on my cabinet that uses a standard furnace style filter. Works quite well, and gets MIGHTY dusty...

That is a great idea and one that I'll have to steal! I haven't actually added a vent to my closet, but it is in a location where I can usually leave to door open. I usually only close it when we have friends with children come over or guests spending the night because it is near the spare bedroom.

[bartley9]

Originally Posted by davephan

The garage is probably not a good location because of the summer heat, unless the garage is air-conditioned! In Minnesota, my garage gets very hot most of the summer. Since your climate is hotter, the garage is way too hot for a computer.

Dave

I have had my server, stb's, UPS etc all in a rack in my garage for years with no problems at all. The computers are not filtered and they suffer less from "dust" than pc's in the house(I think this may be due to the fact that "dust" is really mainly dead skin )

I have speedfan to provide thermal control on the fans.

Actually I did have a problem with heat originally so I built a special server box to maximise airflow - when it was finished it looked exactly like the ones at work (which was a bit of a surprise to me but obvious really)

[myoung84]

Originally Posted by bartley9

I have had my server, stb's, UPS etc all in a rack in my garage for years with no problems at all. The computers are not filtered and they suffer less from "dust" than pc's in the house(I think this may be due to the fact that "dust" is really mainly dead skin )

I have speedfan to provide thermal control on the fans.

Actually I did have a problem with heat originally so I built a special server box to maximise airflow - when it was finished it looked exactly like the ones at work (which was a bit of a surprise to me but obvious really)

Do you have any pics of the server box and your setup?

[CollinR]

Was it 105*F last week where you live?


Now you could do a heat exchange with the concrete slab floor or a garage, thats totally workable. But if the air temp is over 100*F you have little chance of proper cooling air:air.

[myoung84]

Originally Posted by CollinR

Was it 105*F last week where you live?


Now you could do a heat exchange with the concrete slab floor or a garage, thats totally workable. But if the air temp is over 100*F you have little chance of proper cooling air:air.

My new house is in Tulsa, so yeah garage is probably out of the question.