19 Oct
2007
19 Oct
'07
1:09 p.m.
This discussion of 3-phase power and VAXen in your home and the big
Amdahl machine transport has reminded me again of my desire to have
some sort of controlled environment for my big SGI boxes.
I have a rather large lot and I considered building a Henk style
machine room on my property attached to the back of the garage. My
idea was to build a machine room adjacent to the garage and have a
large set of doors put on the back of the garage so that equipment
would be loaded/unloaded through the garage into the machine room.
However, it gets pretty frosty in winter time here and pretty toasty
in summer time. (I'm in Salt Lake City, UT.) Recently there was
some program on TV touting the benefit of adobe construction for its
high insulating value and keeping a relatively constant indoor
temperature with little to no active heating or cooling. That got me
to thinking that if you built a machine room with an adobe exterior,
then you'd only need AC equipment to compensate for heat generated by
the machines themselves and wouldn't need to worry much about the
seasons.
Any thoughts on this? Note that I'm not suggesting going without any
active cooling, just wondering if adobe construction would lower the
bills and make the necessary cooling equipment smaller.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
19 Oct
19 Oct
1:23 p.m.
On 19 Oct 2007 at 14:09, Richard wrote:
Any thoughts on this? Note that I'm not
suggesting going without any
active cooling, just wondering if adobe construction would lower the
bills and make the necessary cooling equipment smaller.
There are lots of very good alternative construction techniques.
Walls made of straw bales covered with chicken wire and stucco were
very popular a few years ago. Rammed earth is another possibility.
Why not go subterranean? Relatively constant temperature year round.
Some local codes allow varied construction; others are downright
hostile. Earthquake codes may get in the way of adobe in some areas.
Plumbing and wiring with adobe can be a real pain, unless you don't
mind running everything on the interior surface.
Cheers,
Chuck
1:50 p.m.
In article <4718AFE6.29791.1E075F49 at cclist.sydex.com>,
"Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> writes:
On 19 Oct 2007 at 14:09, Richard wrote:
I had considered rammed earth using the technique called "passive
annual heat storage". Basically you have a huge dry earth mass into
which you pump heat all summer long and draw heat out of it all
winter long. For a machine room, you'd probably want to do the
reverse: draw heat away from the machine room into the earth mass all
summer long and draw (some) heat out during the winter. To create
a dry earth mass large enough to provide sufficient cooling for a
machine room I'd need to do some calculations, but off the top of my
head I was figuring that the earth mass would need to be pretty
large. I was figuring I'd need to buy an empty lot instead of use
the back of my garage :-).
Any thoughts on this? Note that I'm not
suggesting going without any
active cooling, just wondering if adobe construction would lower the
bills and make the necessary cooling equipment smaller.
There are lots of very good alternative construction techniques.
Walls made of straw bales covered with chicken wire and stucco were
very popular a few years ago. Rammed earth is another possibility.
Why not go subterranean? Relatively constant temperature year round. Some local codes allow varied construction; others are
downright
hostile. Earthquake codes may get in the way of adobe in some areas.
Plumbing and wiring with adobe can be a real pain, unless you don't
mind running everything on the interior surface.
Good point, I hadn't considered earthquake codes w.r.t. adobe. As
for the wiring, I'd either live with the industrial look of interior
conduit or just put up drywall on the interior to hide it.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
2:08 p.m.
On 19 Oct 2007 at 14:50, Richard wrote:
I had considered rammed earth using the technique
called "passive
annual heat storage". Basically you have a huge dry earth mass into
which you pump heat all summer long and draw heat out of it all
winter long. For a machine room, you'd probably want to do the
reverse: draw heat away from the machine room into the earth mass all
summer long and draw (some) heat out during the winter. To create
a dry earth mass large enough to provide sufficient cooling for a
machine room I'd need to do some calculations, but off the top of my
head I was figuring that the earth mass would need to be pretty
large. I was figuring I'd need to buy an empty lot instead of use
the back of my garage :-).
You could always drill a well and use a subterranean aquafer for
heating/cooling.... :)
Cheers,
Chuck
2:44 p.m.
In article <4718BA63.24169.1E305774 at cclist.sydex.com>,
"Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> writes:
You could always drill a well and use a subterranean
aquafer for
heating/cooling.... :)
Interesting idea; its cooling you have to worry about most for a
machine room and I don't know if there's a way for me to get
sufficient cooling that way. (I live in a desert, my house is on clay
and I have no idea if there's any aquafer beneath me.) Some of these
ideas translate into "feasible, but not cost effective" compared to
traditional A/C.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
3:01 p.m.
Richard wrote:
Interesting idea; its cooling you have to worry about
most for a
machine room and I don't know if there's a way for me to get
sufficient cooling that way. (I live in a desert, my house is on clay
and I have no idea if there's any aquafer beneath me.) Some of these
ideas translate into "feasible, but not cost effective" compared to
traditional A/C.
You have a better chance of hitting OIL rather than water. Ben.
PS. That idea is not mine, but of some old 60's cartoon.
21 Oct
21 Oct
11:08 a.m.
Richard wrote:
In article <4718BA63.24169.1E305774 at
cclist.sydex.com>,
"Chuck Guzis" <cclist at sydex.com> writes:
Cooling can be done by simply digging down several feet,
and running smooth conduit in a serpentine fashion. One end
exits into the area you want to cool, and a simple fan, or a solar
chimney, forces warm air into one end of the conduit, and cool
air comes out the other end. No water is needed, or wanted.
Brief articles to get you started:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_cooling_tubes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_chimney
This works because the ground below a certain depth is usually
much cooler than the surface, which is why your grandparents
dug a root cellar to store vegetables and preserves.
You need to make sure it is well screened to keep "critters" and
pets out.
You could always drill a well and use a
subterranean aquafer for
heating/cooling.... :)
Interesting idea; its cooling you have to worry about most for a
machine room and I don't know if there's a way for me to get
sufficient cooling that way. (I live in a desert, my house is on clay
and I have no idea if there's any aquafer beneath me.) Some of these
ideas translate into "feasible, but not cost effective" compared to
traditional A/C.
11:28 a.m.
On 21 Oct 2007 at 12:08, Kevin Handy wrote:
This works because the ground below a certain depth is
usually
much cooler than the surface, which is why your grandparents
dug a root cellar to store vegetables and preserves.
I was thinking about big-iron machine room with a heat load of
perhaps 100K BTUs or more. Earth tubes of any practical size just
don't have the capacity for that.
Heat pumps using wells for a heat source or sink are not uncommon for
large-capacity installations.
Cheers,
Chuck
11:42 a.m.
In article <471B959E.1070301 at srv.net>,
Kevin Handy <kth at srv.net> writes:
Cooling can be done by simply digging down several
feet,
and running smooth conduit in a serpentine fashion. One end
exits into the area you want to cool, and a simple fan, or a solar
chimney, forces warm air into one end of the conduit, and cool
air comes out the other end. No water is needed, or wanted.
What you describe is a variant of passive annual heat storage. But
for a machine room we're talking *lots* of BTUs that need to be
removed. The approach you describe is fine for a root cellar, but so
far I'm not convinced it would be practical for a machine room, but I
haven't done the calculations.
--
"The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline" -- DirectX 9 draft available for download
<http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/download/index.html>
Legalize Adulthood! <http://blogs.xmission.com/legalize/>
22 Oct
22 Oct
2:03 a.m.
On Sunday 21 October 2007 19:08:30 Kevin Handy wrote:
This works because the ground below a certain depth is
usually
much cooler than the surface, which is why your grandparents
dug a root cellar to store vegetables and preserves.
That depends on where you are. Once you go 1m down into the soil, it stays at
a pretty steady 14?C in these latitudes (57?N), which is usually warmer than
the surface temperature, except in the middle of summer.
Gordon
2:03 a.m.
On Sunday 21 October 2007 19:08:30 Kevin Handy wrote:
This works because the ground below a certain depth is
usually
much cooler than the surface, which is why your grandparents
dug a root cellar to store vegetables and preserves.
That depends on where you are. Once you go 1m down into the soil, it stays at
a pretty steady 14?C in these latitudes (57?N), which is usually warmer than
the surface temperature, except in the middle of summer.
Gordon
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