RE: Re: Outhouse / Node 0 ventilation

["Nigel Giddings" <nigel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Frank,

You are right with the cat5 and co-ax, once it is in it is in... you may
add a little but sounds as if you would have trouble with that because
of the route through the house. One thing to consider, depending on
layout, is to use an external 'false' rainwater down-pipe to route
cables from the ground floor into the loft. People don't notice
rainwater pipes...

Again depending on the layout you may want to consider drawing in
external air and pushing that into the house once it has been heated by
the equipment... Some filtration would be a good idea. Not sure how much
'powered' equipment you intend to have but I would say 50% if the power
consumption will end up as heat in the room, if not more. A sealed room
will heat surprisingly quickly and in the summer when we get 20 - 25
degrees outside you will not get much 'free cooling'. In my opinion a
stable temperature is more important than a cooler temperature. Thermal
shock through change will do more damage than high temp. Internal
temperatures of 40 deg are not unknown.

Years ago I worked for a mobile phone company (Pre GSM (E-TACS only in
London TACS in the countryside)) they would use 'free cooling' ie a
bl**dy big fan sucking air in from outside on a thermostat. After about
18 months they had to move up to Air Con but that was due to the cabins
being filled with equipment. The external alarm would kick in at 45
degrees C air temp. I would then have to visit site to open the door and
clean the filter...

My current equipment room regularly reaches 28 deg C if the room door is
kept closed. With the door open it falls back to 20C with the rest of
the basement currently around 12 - 15 degC so there is a lot of heat
produced but then I do have quite a few large old servers. The 17"
monitors also have a surprising effect when turned on... ie they heat
the room well. In another company I worked for it was cheaper to upgrade
to TFT monitors than to upgrade the Air Con to handle CRTs.

I will be using fresh air from my Whole House ventilation and pushing
the heated air to the rest of the basement and central hall.

In Summary, look to draw in outside air, thermostat controlled, filter
it, and if possible push the heated air to habitable space so that you
get some secondary use. Also you can probably expect the effect to be
something like a 1 or 2 bar electric fire on permanently....

Nigel

-----Original Message-----
From: frankjones2928 [mailto:frankjones2928@xxxxxxx]
Sent: 28 April 2005 22:14
To: ukha_d@xxxxxxx
Subject: [ukha_d] Re: Outhouse / Node 0 ventilation

Thanks for the response Nigel.

> I think you are on the right lines, however if the Node 0 is only
70cms
> deep I suppose you won't have rear access to any rack mounted
equipment
> ?

Yes, it is narrow, but it is dictated by a window on the outhouse. If
we made it deeper we'd have to made it a lot deeper, unless we put the
wall in the middle of the window ;) and that would leave too small an
area for the rest of the room.

> I think this needs careful thought. If you plan not to have rear
access
> to equipment you will need to do a lot of extra work with cable
> management. I'm not saying it can't be done but it will require more
> effort.

as it stands, i have at least a metre spare for all cables going into
the wall (the cables come up in the ground in the toilet and are then
routed through the single brick wall. this should give me some
flexibility as to how i wire.

> Maybe you could plan for racks to pull forward into the room for
working
> on and then push them back and close the door afterwards? This
takes a
> lot of room as well, unless you are a very skinny person, not
typical on
> this list...

i am quite skinny actually, unusal around these parts i know ;)

for the main cat5 and coax cabling, i don't envisage making changes
any time soon. in fact, i won't really be able to as the room which
feeds the cable pipes is having a new solid hardwood floor going down
soon. i have "more than enough" cat 5 going into each room, and a
fair
bit of coax as well.

but obviously that is just the start of things. i then need to think
about all the av equipment, power sockets, i/r etc etc and that's
where access does get tricky.

> You will need to arrange for air changes (ventilation). It is always
> better if you can use this air rather than exhaust it into the fresh
> air, after all its your electricity that is heating it...

can you expand on this part please nigel? this is the area i am most
unsure about.

> What I am saying is cable management / routing is the key. Do you
have
> height that you can use, my Node 0 is 2.8 metres high and I route
all
> the cables from above.

without going out in the dark (there is no power in there at the
moment!), at a guess i'd say it is about 12ft at the apex.

thanks for your help

frank