Office ventilation ideas

[myoung84]

OK, I need some ideas on getting heat out of my office at home. I have a decent amount of equipment in my office such as 2 desktops, 1 laptop, and some other network and TV recording stuff. The desktop PC I use for Sage TV runs 24/7 along with the PVRs and STBs. I keep my ceiling vent closed in the winter so the heater does not pump heat in the room and it stays about the same temp as the rest of the house. Now that it's getting warmer out, it's starting to become an oven in here yet the rest of the house is comfortable. I need some way to pull air out of the room, aside from sticking a box fan in the door. Has anyone else run into this? I work from home quite often and it's only going to get worse as the summer comes. My home office is pretty small, about 10x10. I thought of putting in a bathroom fart fan in the ceiling but I think that will get too loud. Any ideas?

[myoung84]

Here is a pic of my setup.

[GKusnick]

There are bathroom fan solutions where the fan lives at the far end of the duct and makes very little noise.

The other option is to find someplace else to put some of that equipment.

[myoung84]

Moving the equipment is not going to happen.

I will look into the bath fan idea with the motor in the attic, I saw some earlier while googling. My only concern with those is, when it's not running, will I get a bunch of hot air from the attic filling up my room with more hot air?

[pjpjpjpj]

Um, crack a window?

Seriously though, with most home systems, this is an issue that is not easily resolved.... or at least, not cheaply resolved. If it's still cold enough outside to require heating in the rest of the house, then having a space with a high internal load is a problem.

I'm an HVAC guy by trade - PM me and I'll try to come up with some ideas for you. Let me know what floor this room is on, whether you have an attic above or an open basement/accessible crawl space below, what direction the room faces, where you live, etc....

[robk]

My office is on the main floor of the house, built on a slope down to a river. Downstairs is partially underground except for the doors and windows on the river. Luckily, my office sits right over the air handler situated downstairs (basically underground) So, I rad a return from the floor of the office - standard size about 6 x 12 - with a flexible pipe going into the main return duct downstairs. Works perfect - draws hot air out.

Rob

[Menehune]

Is one of the walls an exterior wall? You could cut a hole in it and put a dryer exhaust vent in the wall. Hook an exhaust booster fan into the dryer duct to "suck" the hot air out.
For the ceiling solution, you could use 6 or 8 inch insulated, flexible AC duct to reduce the heat radiated into the vent line or you could wrap the duct with fiberglass bat insulation-same thing, you just assemble it yourself.
I'm not certain if inline fans have a damper. I know the ceiling mount fan in my bathroom does so the warm, moist air doesn't flow back into the bathroom.

[dbullock]

In our media room I have a large rack for all the stereo equipment, STB's, SageTV/WHS server and more. It all sits in a small closet within the media room.

I installed a quiet bathroom fan to pull the heat out of the closet. You can barely hear the fan even with the door open. The coolest part is that I found a digital thermostat that is a line voltage thermostat.

You can use a thermostat like this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-TL72.../dp/B000GGPMZ6

As for a super quiet fan, this is what I used:
http://www.broan.com/display/router....oductID=100467

[SWKerr]

If you have a Window and a plug a good old fashioned Window Air Conditioner ($150) will work and is easy to install.

A Whole House Fan ($200-300) in the ceiling will pull the hot air out in seconds. These things are great in the spring and fall as well. Open a few windows on the other side of the house or down stars and in a 5-10 minutes the house has all new air. Can be a little loud to leave on if you are in the room.

[myoung84]

Thanks for all the comments, these are all good ideas. I think the easiest solution will be the bathroom fan in the ceiling. I have a 2 story house and my office is on the top floor with access to the attic above it. The office is on the southwest corner with one window facing south and one facing west. I have separate A/C systems for upstairs and down stairs and my upstairs unit is on its last leg. I am trying to get it replaced or repaired very soon. This however is not an issue this time of year since I don't have to run the heat or air. The upstairs was a comfortable 70 degrees yesterday and my office was around 80! I never have issues in the winter since I simply close the vent in my office and all the computer equipments does a good job of heating the room. The summer problems may go away with a new A/C system but I won't know that until I get is replaced.

[dbullock]

A whole house fan is a very good idea.

This one looks awesome and looks to be very quiet.

http://www.quietcoolfan.com/quietgiant.html

[pjpjpjpj]

How much heat do your STBs and HD-PVRs put off (I don't have either)? Looking at your picture, I am guessing that the majority of the heat load in the room is from the two PCs in the desk. And, of course, having the worst possible (southwest) exposure in the room.

If you can tell that most of the load is from the PCs, I would try to spot-exhaust from directly behind them. If there is an open wall stud cavity, you can do it fairly easily. Cut a hole in the wall and install a standard wall return air grille (from Lowe's or HD) over the hole - I would use at least 16x8. Then go up in the attic with a recip saw and cut out a piece of the top plate of the wall above that stud space (okay, verify it's not a load-bearing wall first, etc.), about 8" x 3.5". Install a "boot" transition - the kind that would be below a floor grille, that transitions from a 6" or 4" round duct to a 8x4 grille - with the 8x4 part in the opening you just cut, and the round transition sticking up into the attic. Seal the boot to the wall top plate (obviously). Attach a round duct from that end (the flexible, pre-insulated kind mentioned above) and install an inline exhaust fan, similar to this:
http://www.broan.com/display/router.asp?ProductID=547
It has a backdraft damper so it shouldn't let attic air back into your room. And then install a thermostat in the room - line voltage (as linked above) would be easiest.

Basically, same idea as everyone mentioned above, but just pull the heat directly from the spot where it is most concentrated. Plus the wall grille will be hidden behind the desk and you won't have to look at it.

[myoung84]

The STBs and PVRs put off some heat but not nearly as much as the 2 PCs. I really like your idea but the problem is the wall behind the computers is an exterior wall and the way the roof is made it is impossible to get to the top plate, I have already tried when I was up in the attic running cables. I am going to try first to shut down one PC that I don't really need and see if that helps anything. I always forget it's running until the room gets hot. It's got a cheap power supply and 2 hard drives that make it put off a lot of heat. My Sage PC seems to run fairly cool.

I will have an HVAC guy here this morning and I will see what he thinks. Thanks for your help.

Do you think maybe tinting the windows would help anything? The have thicker curtains and mini blinds now but it seems that a lot of heat comes through them in the afternoon sun. The house itself is actually insulated very well. They resided the house before I bought it and installed insulated vinyl siding over the existing Masonite siding.

[JetreL]

If you have central air. Run a vent return back to your main return. That should pull some of the air out and create more flow.

Tinting your windows can reduce the heat transfer from outside but it sounds like you are having an issue with the heat created from all the electrical devices in the room. Thus your only options are reduce the number of devices, move the devices elsewhere, and/or create air circulation to pull hot air out of the room.

[myoung84]

I think I have enough room to add a small return duct from a wall in the office back to the plenum. On a side note, the A/C guy just left and I was about 3lbs low in freon! It's got a 15 degree differential and seems to be cooling much better.

[wrems]

I do not know the answer to this and just throwing the idea out there. What about water cooling solutions on your computers? They have some all in one solutions: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16835181010 . I don't use and have not used water cooling on any of my PC's. At the same time, it might introduce less hot air into the room than a traditional air cooled system. Maybe someone can confirm or deny my theory. Maybe a regular water cooled system would be better than an all in one...??? Just some food for thought.

[MeInMaui]

Just another off the wall thought... Could you put all of the equipment in a ventilated cabinet? If you run a ducted exhaust fan from the cabinet to the outside so that the cabinet is kept at slightly negative pressure, then the heat from your equipment would never be circulated around the room to begin with.

Aloha,
Mike

[GKusnick]

Originally Posted by wrems

What about water cooling solutions on your computers?

Water cooling is another way to get heat out of the CPU, but the heat still ends up in the room's air via the radiator and fan you see pictured on that newegg product page. The only way water cooling might help is if you pipe the hot water out of the room before passing it through a radiator. And even then you're capturing only the CPU's heat and not the heat from the PSU, hard drives, and other components.

I like the idea of using flexible dryer vent tubes to pipe the exhaust from the PC's case fans directly to the attic or the outside of the house, so it doesn't mingle with the room air.

[dgeezer]

I used to have a regular tower PC under my TV in a cabinet with doors that remained closed all the time. I built a plywood box about 6" deep with no top or bottom which fit over the 2 exhaust fans on my pc. When I pushed the pc back into the cabinet this plywood plenum lined up with a hole in the back of the cabinet. This would exhaust the warm air into a large closet behind the TV. I cut another hole low in the cabinet to provide make up air. This kept the cabinet the same temperature as the room and sent all the heat to the adjoining room. The main benefit for me was a completely silent HTPC.

You might be able to do something similar to direct vent the pcs through a duct as pjpjpjpj suggested.

[jgscott987]

It seems to me that you want to avoid exhausting air from the office to the outside of the house. Any air you force out of the house will have to be replaced with air that leaks in through windows, cracks, etc. Assuming the air in the office is still cooler than the air outside, you will be wasting a lot of energy cooling all of the make-up air that leaks into the house.

The best choice would be to exhaust the heated air into the AC return. A second-best option would be to exhaust the office air into another room in the house that doesn't get used much during the day. You definitely want to avoid creating a negative pressure in the house by exhausting air out.