Bikeshed topic of the week: How to make the space a cooler place

Enough with the puns already.

It’s summer! Temperatures are rising and my patience is diminishing.

Come on team! Solutions! Not problems! We are hackers and we have the smarts. Someone get us the blueprints and let’s get that convection going!

OP starts:

If we make both the fans attached to the window exhaust fans, then we draw in cooler air from the rest of the building, making better use of the ACs of our neighbours. The only drawback is that if we create an under-pressure in the space, there won’t be enough over-pressure for the laser cutter.

/discuss

Leave our AC unit on 24/7 and let it manage it’s own temperature. If you change anything on the unit itself only change it’s temperature setting. Open the windows in the space sparingly. Keep the front doors of the space closed at all times.

Donate money so we can eventually buy a bigger AC unit.

The current fans can cool the space pretty effectively if they’re left running. Doing that would require leaving the windows open. That would require window bars.

Anyone have experience adding bars to windows?

1 Like

Mini swamp coolers everywhere! Who cares if they don’t work in our humidity, minor setback.

1 Like

Install a draft beer system to keep everyone hydrated!

5 Likes

Air circulation is also one of the challenges, but having them blow into people their faces is also not the best way.

A fan hanging from the ceiling in the machine shop towards the parts bins? Then one in the lounge pointing towards the shop? and one near the entrance pointing to the lounge?

We will not be able to afford this.
A way to calculate how big of an AC unit you need
http://www.ebay.com/gds/What-Size-Air-Conditioning-Unit-Do-I-Need-for-My-Business-/10000000177634486/g.html

  • Multiply the square footage obtained for each area by 25.
  • Add 400 for each person who works in that particular area.
  • For each window, add 1,000.

I have a swamp cooler that I use for burning man. It will not work in Vancouver because of the humidity. If you want to try it feel free but it won’t work.

I like this !

++

Moving air in and out of the space is the best solution I know of. One large fan capable of moving 100s of cubic feet of air would work much better then an AC unit.

I like the idea of more better ventilation.

It’d be nice to have a spot with some extra powerful ventilation ( or even - gasp - a really well ventilated booth ) so that we can work on things that need good ventilation without having to leave stuff in the garage with the door propped open. Stuff like spray painting, working with epoxies, or resins.

I’d be down for building a spray booth as part of cleaning up/re-organizing the metal shop and giving it better ventilation.

1 Like

After checking the occupancy logs, there is only one people that show up during the day. Rarely more then one person. Maybe we are putting in a lot of effort (and possibly money) trying to solve the problem for a single person. ie this might not be a problem we even need to solve.

Fans,

Circulating the air around and around will NOT cool the space.

  • Either run the space at negative pressure, with LARGE window fans sucking
    air out.
    Great if the hallway is cool, but not great if the hallway is warm or if we
    are sucking air conditioned air out of the building. Care must be taking to
    insure that fans have shrouds on them so that the warm are does not
    directly flow back into the space.

Run the space at positive pressure, with LARGE window fans connected to
perforated air socks. Otherwise the blast of air off the large fans is too
disruptive. And let air flow out into the hallway and out the window. Care
must be taking to insure that fans have shrouds on them so that they don’t
pull in the warm air leaving.

Barn fans will work best and these are noisy, so it is best if the fans can
be located in a protective cage outside the space.

Nope, but if we introduce cool air, this will allow for more effective distribution and consequently create a cooler space in general, not restricted to just the ingress area.

If we want to positive pressure I recommend these fan tubes.

Each hole in the air tube acts like a small air jet.

Negative pressure can be simpler or we use rigid tubing.
Again anything less than barn/industrial fans probably won’t work well.

1 Like

Have we figured out what the source of the heat in the space is?

VHS shares space with a room that appears to house the main transformer for
the building and the boiler that supplies hot water for the building. As
the weather increases in temperature, everyone in the building will consume
more power, and the room will generate more waste heat. My assumption is
that the building also has its highest occupancy during business hours.

Does it make more sense to try and pull the waste heat out of the building,
or to run the AC unit continually?

We have a massive, secure fan currently configured to blow into the space;
it’s the one used for the heating system. If we can find a way to reverse
it, it can draw the hot air out of VHS overnight.

Other thoughts:

  • the AC unit was present from at least the previous tenant. When was the
    last time any maintenance work was done on it?
  • is it wise to run a high-amperage AC unit completely unattended? What if
    it starts to fail, or overloads the wiring with no-one around to intervene?
  • running the AC unit continually is likely to dramatically shorten its
    lifespan.
2 Likes

I second @seanhagen’s opinion about ventelation, regardless of the decision made about cooling the space. We could attempt to set up a hopefully non-intrusive system similar to this guy’s setup

It’d be great to have a modular system that can be closed off when not in use to stop unnecessary AC loss, while still letting us expand.

We voted against a “stink” booth when we moved in, but perhaps this could be taken on as a project, including adding a noise suppressing wall in the workshop?

I’d be up for helping improve the workshop. It could really use some shelves and better arrangement of tools.

1 Like

And apparently a stink box :stuck_out_tongue:

I know very little about such things, but…
Would it be possible to mount exhaust fans on the root, and run a duct down to our window, pulling air out?

Or the reverse?

This would greatly lower any noise issues.

If we’d like to be more scientific about the air conditioning, we could rather trivially monitor a temperature sensor with one of the existing Raspberry Pi’s or something else around the north end of the room. Ideally we’d also be able to monitor the most significant factors of the space (A/C on/off, window fans on/off, windows opened/closed, doors opened/closed). Some other significant factors are also monitored in some way or another (# of people in the space, whether the laser cutter is on) but access to that data might be limited.

With a month’s worth of data, we would be able to make some guesses as to what is producing the most heat and what can be done about it. At the very least, we can see what the effectiveness is of the A/C unit at a certain programmed temperature. It would also prepare us well in case someone later decides to hack in a custom A/C temperature regulator that takes into account outside weather etc.

One way of reducing the temperature in the space is to reduce the amount of heat generated by things in the space. Computers emit a non-trivial amount of heat; nearly all of the power consumed is turned to heat. They’re generally not so bad when idling, but making sure that the desktop computers automatically enter standby after some time would help. I’ve seen an outlet power monitor at the space, so we can measure any devices to see the amount of power consumed. Humans generate ~100W of heat, but since the space has a strict no-standby clause for humans, we might be best off donating some of them to Free Geek.

I agree that, for now, the A/C should be left on to (attempt to) regulate the space at a certain temperature. It’s a big room with a lot of air and thermal mass, so if we let it get up to 30 C, it’ll take hours to cool back down. I’m not at all against fans as well, though. They might not cool the air, but airflow does cool people, and as long as the breeze isn’t disruptive, it’s an effective way of staying comfortable.

2 Likes

@Rob_MacKenzie: not through the ceiling, so it would need to run outside, which would mean that it requires a permit.