… OK, so I’m getting those heat troubles again with the crunchers in the loft. Not so today as it’s raining but I know the time is coming…
:idea:
I’m thinking of mounting them on the outside of the house :cuckoo:
I’m thinking of a box on the wall outside, with a kind of slot in design to put in each node. Waterproofing using the same stuff I used when constructing the lean to on the side of the house. Now I need some form/method of stopping the oven effect, so was considering a load of extractor fans on the bottom, can’t really be the sides as it leaves open for leaks. Would be great if these fans could be temp controlled. What would I need ? Power supplies would be one PSU per two nodes by splicing a good quality psu, obviously these would be powering the fans.
Just one of those silly ideas I have, more a wonder if it is possible type thing that anything serious as I may have the use of a basement in an office building for a few quid a month.
DT.
Ive got my farm in the Garage roof and I use a bathroom inline type extractor fan mounted at the apex of the roof venting out of the eaves using the flexible hose provided in the kit.This provides a nice temperature gradient between apex and floor. not ideal but it seems to work , I only have to throttle back about 5hz in the hottest weather
No idea what they’re called, how about a design like weather monitoring stations? Those white boxes with horizontal slanted bits, which let air through and keeps water out. A quick googles give this pic as an example. And add a fine mesh inside to keep bugs out…
How about a u bend type chimney? If you vent the heat from the bottom it’s going to be the coolest in the box so unless you are going to add fans to circulated the air inside you’ll end up will heat trapped at the top of the box.
Also a thought, if the box is outside you’ll get some kind of dampness in it unless it’s sealed even with the heat the nodes will be producing. Add a tray of silica gel at the top and this should keep the moisture down. If they turn blue, take the tray out, stick it in a low oven for a bit the pop back in the box.
got loads of scraps of paper here with rough sketches on, making a double “skinned” system to get airflow through in a safe way keeping bugs out… might take piccies of the sketches rather than try to draw them on pc 
DT.
Convert an old fridge :chin:
adequate door seals for weather,
ready built adjustable shelving,
electric supply can be adapted to suit,
existing “drain” piping may be adapted for cooling ?
just thinking out loud :shrug:
best would be water cooled then use the outside to cool the Radiator, that way u dont have to worry about the radiator getting Damp cold air…
but an idea without water cooling might be a closed air system that has mains water pipes inside it, so as you use your water during every day occurences the cold pipes cool down the air inside, and during the night when you dont use the water as much, the outside temp is cool anyway…
Its not going to make your attic any cooler but if you put a few vents in the soffit board and arranged to seal off between the inside floor and the roof, you would be able to draw nice fresh outside air into a rear inlet fan.
Failing that, the same sort of arrangement with some 80mm fans set in the right place in the vertical part should also do the trick.
you’ve been to Reading though Balrog, and yet you still say “nice fresh outside air” 
The boards are right near the bottom angle, I thought of trying to force convection using a boxed in approach, but as the farms numbers seem to change depending on which way the wind blows (delib. pun :chuckle: ) decided too much effort. Thanks for the suggestions 
DT.
i thuoght the bit between the attick and the floor below it was ment to keep the heat in? not the roof of the attic?
as our attic is Freezing… but everything below it is too hot…
Ahh the smell of the gas works. Well if you will insist on living within 5 mins walk of the River Thames :shrug: 
Can’t remember if you’ve got any unused chimneys, useful source of extract maybe.
wormms comment has got me thinking, what if I were to get some of that shiny silver reflecter stuff they use in loft conversions, place that on the underside of the slopes, then cover with 1/2" ply . Anyone ? would that stand a chance of working, would surely keep the heat in that the machines create, but that is neglible comaparable to the heat that comes from the slates when the sun is out.
DT.
The sun certainly heats your loft but imo you’ve got to either get the heat away or get some cold in from somewhere. Your attic is well sealed as far as air flow is concerened and you’ve probably got something like 100W of heat per PC being generated. I don’t think just insulating it is going to do the job.
Heat loss = U*temp diff *roof area
A slate and felt roof has a U value of something like 0.5W/m2K (from memory), so at a guess, take an outside temp of 25C, an internal temperature of 35C, a roof area of 60m2
Heat lost = .5 x (35-25) x 60 = 300W.
or put another way if you’ve got 500W to dissipate the inside/outside temp difference needs to be 18C.
The option of paying to have them run in the corner of an office buildings basement is starting to look quite favourable for the summer.
Was it just a “gut feeling” or can you say that in the winter, the temp difference being greater between the loft and inside would have assisted in keeping the house warm ? It felt colder when I turned them off. Our first floor has no heating, only heating is gas fires downstairs. Having a gradual temp diff between roughly 20 downstairs, 16upstairs, 12 loft, 6outside seemed better, if the loft kit was off there seemed to be a noticable drop in the first floor temps. Would this be true or just me trying to justify leaving all the crunchers on ?
Certainly thought provoking at the moment. I know the Major is right on the cost of ownerships using better/newer/more expensive inital outlay kit, but I can’t manage that without complete downtime for a while and selling to get the funds :chin: What a dilemma :lol:
To farm or not to farm = no question, I’ll get my digger Just aiming for my best solution in terms of costs.
I know I can run them with them on the wall as original post, but our garden is a south facing suntrap, and hence all the back walls of the house are as well. Beckie pointed that one out to me … :doh: So back to the drawing board :sigh:
DT.
well, for heating in winter… all problems solved
and if u have a LESS perfect attic, also a good solution
would probbelly be good to have just 1 thing going tho the floor, and having all the computers being ducked into it with some fans and stuff…
a bit noisy wormss, air heating systems are noisy, these could not really be turned off easy in that setup, and it would be going straight into bedrooms … theory is reasonable, but when the hot air has such a large difference in temp to the cold, it rises quicker, so would need far too much in noise terms to operate a scheme like that. (sorry, massive sentence, I’m getting tired)
DT.
fine… move into this house then… lol, solves all your problems… as there is NO HEAT in the attic… EVER…
a little damp tho, from all the constent cold air.
plus, the attic is only SEMI bricked up to our nextdoor neibours, so the computers would have to heat up the air not only on our side, but next doors too, and they are old and i dont think they even know they have an attic.
1 x Asus Vintage-AE1 Barebone system Athlon/Sempron skt 754 SIS 760 GX 800FSB +VGA LAN 6ch.audio USB2 (2yr Warr.)
1 x AMD Sempron 2800+ 64 Bit Edition Retail Boxed inc Fan, skt 754 (3 year warranty)
Arrives Friday :lol: worth a shot, the other ones I have in this vain run real nice and cool, advantage using the barebones means selling them on will be easier when I’m done
Thinking of selling all the socket A kit and getting 4 of these to replace the 6 current barton setups, might see a slight drop in output, but the lessening in power consumption and effort to keep them cool should help a ton.
Will report on findings over the weekend The major can keep to his expensive kit, I can’t quite stretch that far, so going to have a go with these, already tried a 64bit ltsp kernel with success using my laptop 
Of course, going 64 bit means Boinc may become viable with an optimised 64 bit client :devil: for the farm, then Folding on day to day machines, heck knowing me there may end up with two farms, the 32bit socket a’s I have now and a load of these in the office !!
DT.
if your house has a redundant chimney, how about removing some single bricks (to prevent collapse) and putting a series of 1 inch diameter holes along the north facing eaves? natural convection would help with airflow, and with a northerly wind would become foced.
the 1 inch diameter would prevent avian ingress or could have mesh stuck over it inside. so long as your insulation does not cover the holes this should work - but not sure how well.
using reflective foil-backed expanded polystyrene boards in between the diaganol joists would help further, but its airflow you really need.
Agreed. Realised how hot my room at uni was becoming with 2 desktops and a laptop in (loft is different…no lives in it…I hope;) ) but living in a hot room…
Anyhow…
Opening my window, the room door and the shower window across the corridor caused a large draught which cooled my room down in minutes:D
I can really say how to help movement in the loft…you seem to have had some good ideas given to you as well as your own. A bit of trial and error I guess. Or a load of Sempreon’s instead:p
