options for most efficient "hot air recycling"

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
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This is where my server room will eventually be:

lrg-895-dsc02757.JPG


This is my plan:

That bottom area is the crawlspace and it's fairly cool so I will grab air from there to cool the server room. If that air does not cut it, I have another crawlspace under my garage that is even colder.

I plan to build some kind of custom cabinet and custom "slide in" cases that are designed so the exhaust air goes into an enclosed cavity and that air is ducted to the return of the furnace, so when the furnace is not running it will still somewhat circulate into the duct system (probably just come out of the real return duct, which is fine). For summer I'm not sure yet, but I will want to simply dispose of the air outside, perhaps through a dryer vent. I'd have to find some low energy use blowers to help move this air around, but since my idea would be to completely enclose the "hot isle" the fans of the PCs would help push the air.

A simpler thing I thought of is just have the servers in regular cases on a basic shelving unit, and have a vent right on the ceiling that just sucks the air in, as most of the hot air will rise so I can take advantage of this. I would insulate the ceiling to try to contain the hot air on top so it gets sucked into this vent. The vent would then hook up to the furnace return.

That brick wall is also an outside wall on the side of the house, so I have the option of adding an AC unit for in the summer, but for winter I rather recycle the heat then use AC.

I will probably extend the stairs a bit so they are less steep, and then the server room wall will go from the end of the stairs to the brick wall. I might make that wall go a bit further out, but not sure yet. The crawlspace area will probably be enclosed and there will be a space at the bottom about 1 foot high so only the coldest air will enter the room.

Anyone have any other ideas? I'm just in planing stage now as I am far from being able to afford this. I only have 3 servers now (and the backup server will be retired soon when my new backup solution is ready) but I want to design this to handle more servers for expansion and what not. Most of this stuff is just hobby and most of it is virtualized.

This can't heat the whole house, that I know, but even if it makes a slight difference when the furnace is not on, it will save on energy instead of wasting that heat. Will also give me a good excuse to add more servers and perhaps run F@H or something on them. I will probably store AV equipment in that room too eventually when I do my rec room. Heck might still put my upstairs HTPC in there once I build it, and just stream everything, but not sure yet. I love the idea of everything being centralized in a soundproof room (will insulate that room like mad when I build it - more research to be done on that aspect)
 

aigomorla

CPU, Cases&Cooling Mod PC Gaming Mod Elite Member
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what is the machines going in that room.

I had a simular setup, and there i had 4 farm systems up.
They were quads, but in about 2 hours, you would feel that heat build up down there unless you had a fan open for fresh air.\

Are we talking about those three boxes? What systems are inside?
 

Red Squirrel

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May 24, 2003
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what is the machines going in that room.

I had a simular setup, and there i had 4 farm systems up.
They were quads, but in about 2 hours, you would feel that heat build up down there unless you had a fan open for fresh air.\

Are we talking about those three boxes? What systems are inside?

those 3 + whatever else I may add in the future. Basically I want "fresh" air from the crawlspace coming in, and the hot air exhausted out, somewhere else (preferably upstairs).

The black tower on the right is probably the biggest heat generator as it is a core2quad with 4 HDDs and is a VM server.
 

Rubycon

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Aug 10, 2005
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Better be careful with air from the crawl space. The relative humidity may be too high.
 

Red Squirrel

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Better be careful with air from the crawl space. The relative humidity may be too high.

Yeah in the summer it gets humid but I keep a dehumifier going. I would maybe even force the air through it before it hits the server room, though it would be warm then and kind of defeat the purpose. Worse comes to worse in summer I'll use an AC unit. I'd probably need to set it up in a way to switch this system around based on the season anyway. I would not want hot air going in my furnace ducts in summer, for example.
 

aigomorla

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good luck on the build..

would love to see the final outcome.
 

Red Squirrel

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Wont be doing this for quite a while, but I will definably post. I'm still debating on a fully custom cabinet/cases or standard rackmount/shelf and just suck the air from the ceiling through a duct. Either way, need to save up on cash.
 

Rubycon

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Aug 10, 2005
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Just remember a dehumidifer heats the air significantly despite the evaporator/condenser being in the same path. The heat of compression gets added to the overall picture.
 

Schmide

Diamond Member
Mar 7, 2002
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The cement in a house will never get warm. In Canada the ground temperature probably averages in the teens (Celsius). You could lay down a 4x8 sheet of plywood supported by spaced 2x4s filtered on one side. (kind of a raised floor) Draw air from the other side and duct it into your servers. This would not only possibly provide good air but also not limit your storage space. Exiting air could be ducted into covered floor beam chambers. Basically nail a very thin 1/8x4x8 under the joists. Maybe some heat will be absorbed by the floor. Edit: In the summer this would duct the heat away from the main room and thusly absorbed by the ambiance of the large unused area at the rear of your storage area.

Reality is, say your servers are using a few hundred watts of power, they would not even make a dent in the heat of a furnace, where you're talking 100k btu (30k wattage) output. (probably more in Canada).
 
Last edited:

Machupo

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Dec 15, 1999
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If you ever re-do your lawn, you can always bury finned pipes a couple feet below the ground and run a communal water loop through there to put computer heat into the ground. Better yet, put it under your driveway and you won't have to shovel all winter :p
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
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The cement in a house will never get warm. In Canada the ground temperature probably averages in the teens (Celsius). You could lay down a 4x8 sheet of plywood supported by spaced 2x4s filtered on one side. (kind of a raised floor) Draw air from the other side and duct it into your servers. This would not only possibly provide good air but also not limit your storage space. Exiting air could be ducted into covered floor beam chambers. Basically nail a very thin 1/8x4x8 under the joists. Maybe some heat will be absorbed by the floor. Edit: In the summer this would duct the heat away from the main room and thusly absorbed by the ambiance of the large unused area at the rear of your storage area.

Reality is, say your servers are using a few hundred watts of power, they would not even make a dent in the heat of a furnace, where you're talking 100k btu (30k wattage) output. (probably more in Canada).

Hmm not a bad idea. I'll keep that into consideration. I like the idea of running cold water through the ground too. Like a heat pump, sorta. In fact I could run some pex along the ground in the crawlspace under my garage. it gets really cold in there, and it needs to be warmed up, so the hot water will create heat in there.

I'm also debating on just shelling out the cash for a real rack and real rack mountable cases then just suck the hot air from a duct in the ceiling. I'll see how my web hosting company goes once I start it. I will end up having to setup quite a few more servers in the future for backup/testing. Right now I have 3 servers and one only turns on to do backups so I'm not producing that much heat.