I may soon be moving into an old house, a 'fixer upper' and have toyed with the idea of installing a master watercooling system. The idea is to have a second set of pipes that lead from the garage to the living room, bedroom, and office. The garage will have a large tank that I can add a gallon or so a month (as needed) and a large pump to send the water through. I would probably use pvc? or standard plumbing for this, and have quick connectors in the room. The problem is, I would (I'm guessing) have to constantly have water going through each room even though I'm using it only on one room at a time (want room to improve though!) and so I'll probably have to have a bridge, or jumper per say... so the water can keep pumping through. I also haven't decided on how to cool it... I think the funniest way would be having a solar powered fan, so my PC would be cooled by the sun... (and that would be cheaper!) But I don't know... should I use an old car radio, and large fan, and have the fan also double as a cooling device for my garage (shop)? All in the planning, may not even move, but the house is there, I've been given the keys, and there is nothing saying I can't do this anyway!
Well M8y if youre getting a massive tank for the water then that will help a lot also. If uhave the warm water comin in the top of the tank and cold out the bottom, all this convection crap will help as cold water will live at the bottom of the tank. For cooling , id suggest a couple of old air conditioning units, you know, off the sides of buildings, get a couple of these and quieten them a bit, and get very good cooling. You could even keep the unit standard and put it on the side of this garage you speak of.
Why not run a few motorized valves from a central point (eg the garage) then using a relay from the computer, open the valve when the computer is on, then close the valve when the computer is turned off.
One of the facilities the company I work for owns is watercooled. They built a Big Ass Tank where they super cool the water at night and pump it through during the day. Supposedly it save s a fortune. But that is all I know about it. As far as Solar power goes, I have my doubts as to the actual viability of it. In most cases, the amount of money you save would take 70 years to pay for the equipment.
they probably pay less per unit of electricity in the night, theres a powerstation closeby here (inside a mountain!) which opens the floodgates just before Prime Time TV (it produces electricity within 7 seconds!) and the pumps water back from the lower lake to the top lake in the night where they pay a fraction of the cost.
must be a damn sight cheaper and safer than using some sort of storage facility! Imagine how much juice it uses to pump water back up! Way more than it produces, but it is still cost effective because is is a prime time power generating facility.
Why not just pump fresh cold water into the system. Even with it at a low flow, it would work. Depending on the cost of water in your area
your a bit buggered when the waterboard cut off your water supply for maintenance. however there is a way to get around that. if you use water going to your garage and install non, return valves followed by a flow rate meter, so when the flow stops, you can have a pump that pumps from an emergancy resevouir through your system. there would have to be some sort of cutoff as well so it re-circulates the water in the system instead of the usual dumping. Snood
can you still go visit the power station? I remember my dad talking about taking a group of kids when he used to work as a teacher in a correctional school and saying it's just thuis massive cavern with the poer station stuff inside.
yup, it's an attraction called "The Electric Mountain" (got a funny story about this in a minute) and they take you in on like a minibus and show you parts of the station, the valves etc, and they have an open Turbine which is always running. My father owns a plumbing and heating business and we've got the contract for the place, so I've been to and seen bits of the station that the public are not allowed to go to! the funny story - About a month ago we were having a few drinks in a place called Abersoch. I.E - Self-indulgant-weiner-yuppie-ville, and there was this really "posh" taff talking to a guy from work, basically ripping everything in wales, and she goes "I mean, Electric mountain.... ooooh! whats that all about? How can a mountain be Electric?" so I said to he "Do you acctually know what's in there? Only The FASTEST turn on/power producing powerstation in the UK" to which she had no answer.... Miiiiiiaaaaaaaahh!!
Small update, it will be about a month until I get to start this project, so it is Research Research Research until then. I'm thinking of having a big tank, and during the day it will pump all of it through the computer once, then at night switch to a reserve tank as the major tank switches to flowing through possibly a modified car radiator outside. I'm in the desert, so water is scarce, and it gets freezing cold at night, even in the summer. This way I may not even have the need for a fan! Any other ideas? Materials to use? Methods of cooling multiple computers at once?
first off, being in NM yer gonna have to run a closed loop ... or evaporation will kill you ... evaporation also means mineral deposits ... best bet would be to get a glass lined tank, and sink it in the back yard down to were the soil stays wet all the time ...(even in desert this is usually just a couple feet) ... and utilize a branching system like for underfloor heating ... where you can have zones ... and the ability to choke off unused zones ...( i watch too much home repair shows on TLC) .. biggest problem is going to be choice of pumps ... if you have 4 boxes in your house, and your pump does say 400 GPH, with all running each would only get 100 GPH .... and distance will affect the cooling power too ... the bar i used to work at had the keg fridge behind the kitchen, and the bar was about 100 feet away, and there was a 150 foot run from the kegs to the taps ... and we had to use a glycerine based cooling system to keep the beer from foaming ( big tube full of refridgerated glycerine surrounding small tube with beer inside) during the summer even with the system working in full order, the pilsners would foam like mad if the kitchen was busy
wow, tk421, that's a lot of really usefull info. It really changes a lot... I may be able to put the cooling tanks on the side of the house that will be using it the most. (actually my office and living room are on the same side of the 1 story house, so that's perfect) I'll just have to find a better way to refridgerate the tubes... how bad would it be to have beer flowing through the waterblocks though? j/k
