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Using a House's Concrete Foundation To Cool a PC
Agg writes "Well the slab gets poured on Wednesday so I thought I would sink 6 meters of copper pipe in the slab so that I can run my water loop through it when the house is finished. I hope to have water year round at about 16deg [about 61F]. No need for radiators or fans with chilled water coming straight out of the slab!"
The steel rebar and the copper pipe being in close proximity will make them act as electrodes on a battery. This will cause the steel anode to slowly be destroyed by the chemical reaction.
Is it a practical concern in your case? I doubt it, but if they haven't poured yet, it wouldn't hurt to wrap the copper pipe in some PVC tape. This will reduce the thermal coefficient though. Maybe just do it where it passes within a couple inches of the rebar.
Why? It's very similar to what they do when laying radiant heat into the floor (which is very nice btw, over ducted heat, helps with breathing problems).
Also, like a previous comment suggesting, maybe you should look into radiant heat tubing over copper.
I care;
a.) how much copper, btw doesn't concrete corrode copper which is the reason why it isn't placed in the slab anyways.
b.) for each layer of piping you put down you need an additional 3 inches of slab. proper embedment really requires 3" of coverage else the concrete will crack.
c.)concrete curing is an exothermic reaction and it takes your typical slab at least a year to completely cure.
Here is the best part, I'm assuming your in a cold climate with a reasonable frost line (otherwise this would be a stupid idea). If the water in teh pipes stop circulating and freeze it will crack the pipe and the concrete and cause I nice leak. again weakening the concrete overall stress.
I'm IAAAA ( I am an actual architect) so heed the warning. Or do it properly.
I rented a house in Kentucky that had this problem. The house was built with copper pipes embedded in the foundation for water, but to save money apparently the builder had just put bare copper pipe instead of putting it in plastic conduit. About 5 years after the house was built, the pipes started failing (in my case, it was a pipe that led to an outside faucet I never used, and I only discovered it when my water bill went from its normal $20 to about $280 one month).
Fortunately, the landlord in my case was the builder, so he sent a team out to reroute all the pipes up through the ceiling (which was a major mess, but the workers were really careful with my stuff and used sheet plastic generously to contain all the drywall dust, etc) and refunded my water bill for the month. He also replaced all the carpet in the house, since the workers pretty much ruined the carpeting running the new water pipes. So after a week or so of hassle, I had a freshly-painted house with brand new carpeting.
Apparently (as it was explained to me by the landlord) bare copper *can* sometimes work in concrete, but it depends on the acidity of the concrete, which probably depends on the stone and filler used. The landlord admitted he messed up and didn't measure the acidity of the concrete (and he had built and sold a lot of houses in my neighborhood, so he was looking forward to a LOT of repairs like this).
In any case, lining the copper with something is probably a good idea, even if it does reduce heat exchange. Or just use radiant heat pipe as the parent suggests.
After all, there's the heat generated by a computer (maybe 150 watts) to deal with, and 6 meters of pipe. With that much pipe, just the copper exposed to air would probably dissipate enough heat without needing forced air, so exchanging the heat through plastic into a concrete biomass should work just fine.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
There is a data center in WA state that keeps half of its' property as vacant land for the sole purpose of using it as a giant heat exchanger. Looks like about an acre. They have piping about 16 inches underground throughout the field. I am told it works great.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
That is why I wondered why some data corp hasn't bought up the old Titan 2 missile silos we have here in AR and turned them into datacenters. They are VERY deep in the ground, so you have natural cooling there, they are on the side of a mountain with lots of wind, more cooling, and if you put the racks into the silos themselves you could have fresh air blowing straight up and out through the silos. there are also lots of fiber lines running through that area, including dark fiber left by the telecos during the dotbomb. Not to mention with those big steel doors and hardened everything breaking into your data center would be pretty damned difficult, if not impossible. Oh and we have nuclear power here, so electricity is cheap compared to surrounding states.
It always seemed to me that with datacenters needing so much cooling these would be a natural fit. The military has done all the hard work, and from what I heard they sell them pretty cheap. One guy even bought one and turned it into an underground house for his family. Just always seemed to me to be the way to go.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.