Portable Cooling

Wed Nov 12 16:07:06 UTC 2003

>I searched the archives and couldn't find anything about a portable 
cooling
>units so am resorting to posting, sorry if its redundant.

>I am setting up a development lab and need additional cooling on a 
temporary
>basis. 

All cooling units move heat from point A to point B. The end result is 
that
point A gets cooler, but, and it's a BIG but, point B gets hotter. If
you use portable coolers, you have to decide where point B is and
can you get away with increasing the heat there? Will you blow the
heat back into the development lab? Or into the office space next door?
Or into the space above the suspended ceiling which indirectly channels
the heat into every room on the same floor? Or under the raised flooring 
where
it can raise the temperature of every cabinet that is not being cooled 
by the portable units?

IMHO, portable coolers are a bad idea. They add noise to the environment
and increase the overall heat level due to the consumption of electricty.
When we had them in our office for a week, I started working 3 hour days
to escape the hellish atmosphere. In the past I regularly worked in 
buildings that were 35 degrees Celsius indoors (2 degrees C less than 
core body temperature) and it was much more comfortable than that week 
with the portable coolers.

--Michael Dillon 

P.S. it would be interesting to know if anyone has some creative solutions
to data center design to cope with cooling system failure other than 
n+1 redundant coolers.