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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!"
How are you going to explain that if you want to sell that house???
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
I presume you mean 16 degrees centigrade, as opposed to degree Fahrenheit, or Kelvins or Rankines.
Brett
Just don't plan on being able to move your desk.
Copper would be a waste of money tho. Use one of the many types of plastic hose already made for this application.
that is what I want to know.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Doesn't the house shift and settle? Won't a standard 1 + 1/2 inch copper pipe break during that time?
You'll be limiting yourself to a single room within the house, probably a certain location within that room. Plus, as jawtheshark mentioned, it'll be an eyesore for any new owners unless you completely cover it up. To me, that kind of commitment isn't worth a small and some fan noise. If it's worth it to you, then go for it.
... literally. But why limit yourself to PC cooling? Turn the slab into a big radiator and pump air from the upstairs/attic through - you can moderate the temperature of your whole house.
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.
Your PC would be so ice cool you could make novel cylinder ice cubes!
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since those aren't degrees.
You mention condensation but you don't suggest a way of dealing with it (I didn't read the entire 8 page thread though). There are many ways to cool water, but the water should never be cooler than the ambient temperature around the computer being cooled or else you will have condensation. I had this problem when putting my radiator out the window during winter.
I do hope there is a full write up posted after a few months or a year, to see how well this works.
In Soviet Russia jokes are formulaic and decidedly non-humorous.
If you were pouring the concrete, why didn't you put it outside of the concrete? You would probably incur less structural risk ... although I doubt a pipe that small would have much effect. More and more people are building new houses with geothermal exchange to help mitigate costs in heating and cooling.
My work here is dung.
Use PEX instead. Copper will eventually fail. Look at the material that is used for radiant flooring.
Without proper thermal throttling, your roof could come off, even with a passive heatsink.
I think Antec makes a two-story-high fan that might work perfectly in such a situation, but the neighbors might be bothered by the LEDs.
In most areas of the country, it's not a question of if but when your house settles and puts some nice big cracks in your concrete. Whether or not it would be a enough to damage the pipe is another question, but if you're relying on it to cool a semi-expensive piece of hardware, I might be a little nervous about it.
Also, seems like this will severely limit your options for where to put your computer physically.
Are fans really that horrible? They make them fairly quiet now. Is that extra .4 Ghz really worth all that kind of effort?
Presumably the high contact area with the dirt underneath will serve as a sink. Ground source heat pumps are a fairly well established technology.
Though I'm still a tad skeptical it'll work as planned, it's certainly worth a try given the opportunity. Hopefully we'll see a followup.
=Smidge=
Pex is much easier and may actually last longer in concrete.
Depends on who you've contracted the work out to. I'm not kidding. Some inspectors "know" the contractors such that they only do a cursory inspection of the finished product before signing it off.
"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge." - Bertrand Russell.
He should, of course, just tell the truth. Dead pan straight. Perhaps with a suitably (but fake) embarrassed laughter.
In this case it would not hurt at all. A surprised, but friendly buyer. That's it.
Move on. Nothing here to see.
Ground Source heating/cooling is a pretty nifty technology, and can be applied to a whole house HVAC system, rather than just a computer. It obviously requires more tubing than a single computer would, and in most climate will still require some supplemental heating/cooling for more extreme temperature days, but it's still awesome. It does have some upfront costs though.
This idea to do it for a particular computer is a clever idea. I personally wouldn't want the pipe to actually be moving horizontally through my slab, I'd rather dig as small a diameter hole as is possible, but deeper under the slab, and just have the line penetrate the slab vertically. The deeper you go, the more stable the temperature becomes, and the less hollow copper pipe you've got running through the slab, the less you weaken it.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
And you haven't thought through the consequences yet? That my friend is a project that has failure written all over it.
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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.
First, you can use anything (flexible or not) to connect from the copper pipe to wherever in the house you're going...so the arguments about being locked in one place don't...ahem..hold water. But...while the concrete slab is going to be a nice big thermal anchor, you also have to look at how quickly heat will disperse through the slab. You might end up with a hot core around the pipe that dissipates more slowly than you'd like. It will show up as the water slowly heats up on you. Not that hard to calculate...look up the thermal conductivity of concrete, and calculate the thermal gradient you're going to get for a given power input...will fall off like r^2 for a 1-d pipe.
Houses have been built with copper pipes and steel rebar and rewire in the slab for decades now without any electrolytic effects showing up.
Once the concrete is cured, it is no longer an electrolyte. Concrete is not a great electrical insulator, but it's not a great conductor either.
Putting moderation advice in your
Getting rid of heat by dumping it into the ground is a great idea.
The problem is, you're dumping heat into your house's slab, not the ground. You need to put the pipes several feet underground.
All this is is a mild underfloor heating system. If that's what you're trying to achieve, ok, but if you're also paying for air conditioning to remove heat from the house, this is probably not worth it.
Putting moderation advice in your
I always thought it would be a good idea to use a copper strap to connect the cpu heatsink to the case which would act as a huge heatsink. Has anyone tried this?
love is just extroverted narcissism
Unless there's a specific code against it there's no reason why he wouldn't be able to. I work with the Building and Plans department at a county-level government office (I actually admin their software system). When I went through their checklists to add to the new system, it was mostly things you're supposed to do, rather than things you're NOT supposed to do. As long as you do everything on the list you're good to go.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Yeah, it's not like they've been using copper pipes run through concrete for oil lines or anything... for like 80 years...
reality is the copper would be fine for probably 30-40+ years.
not that I think it's a good idea, mainly because you can't ever move your desk.
Negative.
http://www.copper.org/applications/plumbing/techcorner/problem_embedding_copper_concrete.html
They use PEX because it is cheaper and easier to install, NOT because of its longevity.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
If the house settles enough to damage the pipe you have MUCH bigger problems
Unless you live in Alaska or somewhere else where you'd have permafrost.
But if you can see Russia from your house, why would you ever want to waste your time overclocking? :)
He lives in northern Tasmania, not Hawaii. I believe freezing -- or hard freezes -- are fairly rare there. Even then, copper embedded in concrete has been used for many decades and it isn't as big an issue as you seem to think. http://www.copper.org/applications/plumbing/benefits/benefits_main.html
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Seriously, while it's a cool idea, it's not going to be deep enough, imo. It's basically group level. Even when you have a basement that goes into the ground it's not always that cool except for perhaps the floor but that's usually a good 10ft down.
I live in the midwest, and did the same thing 4 years ago, when I had my house built... I use a heat-pipe to fluid thermal exchanger on my ESXi server as well as my gaming rig.
It will in no way harm your resale value, and if your inspector has a brain, it has no impact on the inspection...
Due to expansion and contraction concerns, I had that small (8`x8`) portion of the concrete isolated....
I do not know where you or the parent poster lives, but I can assure you anywhere south of northern Canada it is unlikely that the concrete will get below 0 celcius. I live in the NE United States where it can get quite cold and our basements are almost always temperate (50 degrees F in winter, 60 degrees F in summer). We do not, however, have permafrost. YMMV.
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In my student days, a bunch of friends and I rented a couple of crappy student houses. They were next to each other, and only one house had cable internet access.
We solved the problem by digging a trench running from under one house to under the other. We dropped in PVC piping with a set of elbow joints, ran some cat 5 network cable through, and -- voila -- cheap(er) broadband for two houseloads of starving IT students.
Since the houses themselves were fit only for scrap timber, nobody really cared. And we saved a fortune in broadband bills.
As someone who works in the building design industry I can say with firsthand knowledge, far bigger changes than sticking 6 meters of copper into the slab happens at the last minute all the time. The only reason that you can generally get away with it is that structurally, things are usually designed with such large safety margins that there's not that much to worry about.
Buildings are amazing things, but if you scrape away a few layers of paint and drywall, it's amazing how much of it is just kind of shoved into place without much consideration of the bigger whole.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Y'know big block of concrete.
Deleted
tying into your plumbing would be easier. it's basically the same effect, and won't require the whole loop nonsense.
after all, the pipes that bring water into your house run underground for miles, or at least bring up well water that is ground temperature anyway.
I would think that the concrete would warm up after a while and decrease efficiency of cooling. if you had running tap water your cold side of the system would remain at a ~50-55 degrees all the time. better watch your water bill, though.
That first link is so bizarre, sitting within a post which otherwise seems very logical. My brain is short circuiting as it tries to find the connection between underground piping and spinach pizza.
I got a bunch of raised eyebrows when I had two four-gang electrical outlets (one from either leg of the house power) and an exhaust vent fan installed in one of my closets when we built our house. I wanted it for a server farm but couldn't convince anyone that I wasn't going to be farming something else.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
as nobody uses them.
If the pipe starts leaking you just stop using it. It will not affect the foundation. Concrete and water (in small quantities) are friends. This does not apply to the water on the outside of the foundation trying to get in. That is bad water and must be removed with drains or the like.
It's called Galvanic corrosion and I think the project will have a very very short life since it looks like the rebar is actually in contact with the copper. I wouldn't be surprised if it only lasted a year or two before it starts leaking.
A good article on this is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_corrosion
BTW, this idea of wrapping some tape on the copper when it gets near to the rebar could make the problem about 100 times less severe. IOW, a very good idea.
Someone else mentioned that copper is corroded by the concrete, but this article (http://www.copper.org/applications/plumbing/techcorner/problem_embedding_copper_concrete.html) disagrees.
IANAHE (I am not a hydronics expert) but could you not add a closeable loop of copper to your incoming cold water? Unless you are in a hot place, the cold water incoming should be sufficient to cool or at least put some sort of heat exchanger in.
Shouldn't need to use the concrete.
(1st sig) If this were a snappy sig, you'd be reading it right now. (2nd sig) I'm a karma whore. >Insert FUD here
Talk about a heat sink. I'm a little surprised that this sort of technique is not more widely adopted at places like data centers; geothermal or water-source heat exchange, especially for cooling. I have been looking at using a water-source heat pump system to replace my electrical resistance heating/air conditioning system. Big incentives from the government.
Best regards.
Yeah, that 6m of copper tubing will probably make the house explode, right?
Learn about Photography Basics.
Well, your habit of using the acronym "THC/IP" did rather give the game away....
However they had an old house. Instead of running the pipes to the concrete he decided to make a little hole to the wall and run pipes to the ground outside. The ground seems to work as an excellent heat exchanger. Just run enough pipe underground and it will cool down wether it's winter or summer.
And it's known for a long time. :)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Obviously, you haven't spent much time in concrete trades. Did you even notice the rebar in the photo? Before the slab crushes the copper pipe, it has to sever the rebar. Not happening.
The design is sound and the application is clever.
Best regards.
If you are worried that the weight of the concrete might compress the pipe fill it with water and close both ends. Water does not compress.
the tubing used for floor heating is the right one.
If you sell the house you can praise it as a value added as you can keep the house cool.
and you can connect your PC liquid cooling system to the heat exchanger/cooler/heater element.
I do not know in what climate zone you live, but you can even get some heating out of this.
go and do it!
"Also, like a previous comment suggesting, maybe you should look into radiant heat tubing over copper."
This. I used to live in Alaska and radiant heat slabs were very common. The problem was making sure they never went without heat in the winter. If they did, you ended up with burst pipes and a cracked slab. Big headache.
The fix is burst-resistant flexible tubing. There is a product called Aqua-pex that fits the bill perfectly. Does not burst when frozen, has a 100-year warranty and is easy to install as it is flexible.
The other problem with copper in concrete is that the concrete itself is corrosive. It WILL eventually eat through the pipes leading to all sorts of headaches. Usually, when this happens the only fix is drain them and cap the pipes. Most people in Alaska with radiant flooring, even when using Aqua-pex, lay down a second circuit in case there is a problem. They simply hook up the back-up.
Another suggestion. If you DO use copper tubing, use alcohol, or some other coolant such as glycol, rather then water. You will have better heat transfer as well as less corrosion. This is, of course, assuming you have a closed loop circuit (would be foolish to have anything but).
You mean, stand up for fee simple title rights. You don't own that land. You just hold the title for a little while.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
3" cover is most certainly not required. Most commercial floor slabs are 2.5" concrete on 1/2" form deck (9/16 for the pedantic). A 4" slab will have two layers of rebar in it - either as WWR (gauge wire on a 6x6 grid) or as actual rebar up to 1/2" in diameter. That means as little as 1-1/2" of cover over the steel.
The 3" you may be thinking about is clear cover for steel reinforcement when slabs are cast against earth. In that case, it's to minimize water infiltration and protect the steel from corrosion.
Freezing of the slab is theoretically possible in a very, very cold environment, but not unless the house is left unheated for an extended time as subzero temps and the typical ground temp is below freezing (an ice lens would have to be able to extend from the exterior of the slab all the way to where the embedded pipes are). In that case the whole house would have to be "winterized" with all lines drained.
IAASE (structural engineer), BTW.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
If your pipes burst, you're not using enough ethylene glycol in your circulating fluid.
Yeah, that 6m of copper tubing will probably make the house explode, right?
Depends on what it gets filled with.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Well the slab gets poured on Wednesday
Seeing as it's already Wednesday, the work's either in progress or already completed. Read through the comments, OP, and either congratulate yourself on your idea or bite your knuckles and say "Oh, shit!"
When this topic gets reposted you'll be able to let us know whether the doomsayers were right.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
You should plumb the slab with standard hydronic heating tubing - terminating in the furnace room but also bringing the loop up the wall into a "jumper" in the computer room wall - in a box like you'd use to install water for a washer. Jumper the furnace room or computer room end depending on whether you're using it for the furnace or the computer.
This is easy to explain. Hydronic tubing will also be considerably cheaper and possibly longer lasting than copper, and may be a resale bonus for the house.
It will also let your computer help heat your house in the winter.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I would like to see the results of this in quarterly periods over the next year to see if this is actually a viable cooling resource.
Just because you are wrong and I called you out on it doesn't mean I am a Troll.
All slabs crack...
you don't need frozen pipes to cause that.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
The force needed to move the water in a loop will increase as the length increases. I'm not sure by how much. But an excessive length of pipe may mean your existing water pump for your PC is no longer strong enough to be effective.
Yeah, a website dedicated to promoting copper is a real reliable source on the longevity of copper. Meanwhile, the architect and the guy who lives in Alaska (where these systems are common) up thread tell a different tale.
Google searches and regurgitating the first link are no substitute for knowing what the hell you are talking about.
You mean copper.org has a document that prefers copper over PEX? Shocking.
-nd
When I built my house, I wired every room with about 500 yards of CAT-5 into a 110 block in the basement. 6 months after we moved in, I bought a wireless router. Doh.
-nd
you will not get a better heat transfer fluid than water. Don't be stupid. adding glycol to the loop will depress the freezing point and eliminate pipe bursts in the event of long term heat outage. You can add anti corrosion chemicals at 1mL/L_H2O to prevent corrison, no need to destroy the heat transfer properties of the water.
http://www.copper.org/resources/properties/protection/underground.html
That site says that concrete does not corrode copper. My experience seems to back that up. (Yes, I've built and I've demolished buildings.)
One problem that might cause corrosion, is allowing anything to be electrically grounded through the copper. Read the link. Using a double insulated pump would be a good idea, but not necessary.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
And I thought Engineers trolled Slashdot...
So Copper and Concrete. Fine combo, no worries. But concrete and steel, there is a magical combination! --
- Concrete is weak in tension, steel is strong.
- Concrete is cheap, steel is expensive.
- Concrete is durable against wind and water, steel needs protection.
- And when it counts, they get together -- they expand and contract nearly at the same rate with changing temperature.
Concrete and steel, are a perfect match, just mix the proportions for the job at hand!
Copper pipe in cement + time = leaks
In the 50's when they were cranking out cheap housing, slab houses with copper piped radiant heat in the floor
was the spec. They all started leaking from electrolytic corrosion and had to be retrofitted with baseboard.
Side note: Also made conditions really sweet for termites.
My basement computer lair shares a wall with a storage room, so I've been thinking about cutting a hole and ducting the computer fans through it, basically using the computers to heat the storeroom. There is already a heat vent in that room but I have it dampered down. Any pros and cons to doing that? We don't have air conditioning since Seattle is rarely hot enough for it. Piping computer heat out of the house would seem like a waste of energy the other 95% of the time.
Okay, I get it, he got the informative for the Aqua-pex. Problem is, Ethlyene glycol decreases water's ability to transfer heat. What it does is raise the boiling point, lower the freezing point, and retard corrosion. Replace your coolant mixture when a voltage measurement between fluid and pipe exceeds one volt.
We used to use alcohol in radiators, because it does all that stuff and increases thermal conductivity, too. But there were some problems with fires when people used too much. So we just stopped. If you put 100% ethlene glycol coolant in your cooling system it will work, albeit at a very poor efficiency. You might get away with it in the winter.
If you want something you can just use a little of, there is Red Line Water Wetter, which is often used in racing in all-alloy systems, in which it is sufficient to prevent corrosion. It actually also increases thermal transfer.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Coper is the wrong thing for this application. The contact of your rebar to the copper will setup an galvanic corrosion problems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galvanic_corrosion Under floor heating systems use PEX like everyone is suggesting. Get some and use it. Get the kind with the aluminum in it. The heat transfer is better. If it's too late to change then you must use something kind of antifreeze in this system. Even with PEX I'd use it because water can still burst PEX and crack your concrete.
It all starts at 0
In Texas most modern houses (say less than 50 years old) are on slab construction with embedded copper pipes. Older houses are frequently pier and beam. There are no regulations for copper coating the pipes going through concrete, and plumbing failures of copper pipes in foundations are decently rare. Rusting and failure of iron pipes under foundations before copper became common, isn't infrequent though.
This comment is worded exactly as worded. Any application of clever "Fixed that for you" corrections will be "appreciated".
There. Fixed that for you.
P.S. No, I don't think I'm clever.*
* I preemptively agree that I'm not clever.
Well if you read the text at copper.org (an unbiased source?) it really sounds more like it is "technically" possible, but there are a lot of common factors that can ruin the install. Heard that MA will not allow you to put copper pipe in slabs for radiant heat (thousands of failed copper installs in slabs in MA provide an ample counter examples). Pex tolerates thermal expansion better, can even handle cracks since it flexes and can handle cinder and fly ash. In short it is better
"The copper tube must be completely embedded in the concrete and adequate provision for thermal expansion should be provided where the tube enters/exits the concrete."
"provided that allowance is made for the lateral thermal expansion and movement of the tube and protection of the tube from abrasion. This can be done by insulating the tube where it passes through the wall or by wrapping the tube with an approved tape (to avoid abrasion) and installing it through a sleeve. Please refer to your local plumbing code for specific requirements regarding the protection of pipes and tubes passing through concrete and masonry floors and walls."
"According to the Portland Cement Association the interaction of copper with both dry and wet concrete should not cause a corrosion concern. However, copper should be protected when it comes in contact with concrete mixtures that contain components high in sulfur, such as cinders and fly-ash, which can create an acid that is highly corrosive to most metals including copper."
Now that's a protocol I can endorse! How many grams per second do you typically get when downloading? Is there a flat monthly fee? What are good ISPs* that don't do traffic shaping? Is it easy to encrypt your packets and do you have to pay extra for the aluminum foil/scent resistant wrapper? Can you download across state lines? Or even from Ethiopia?
*Indica Service Providers
What an incredible waste of time and effort.
Unfortunately, the Beowulf cluster went up in smoke.
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Download speeds depend on hardware. Toking ring is somewhat outdated, you were probably all using that back in high school; but still works ok. Ethernet isn't actually that much faster; but the ether has synergistic effects.
First of all, I wouldn't bury all of your cooling pipe in the foundation. The foundation will likely be slightly warmer due to the heat transfer to your house. You should instead bury the pipe in the ground outside and run it into your house. This is done all of the time for geothermal heat pumps, so I suggest you read up on them.
Second of all, you need to remember that heat transfer is not instantaneous. Just because you expose your hot coolant to 14 Degree temperatures for a few meters doesn't mean you will get 16 degree coolant on the other side. It really depends on how much heat this machine is giving off in the first place. You will have to sit down and do some calculations. Fortunately, if you have some basic knowledge of electronics, many of the same formulas apply to heat transfer.
Good luck on your endeavor.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
What happens if you leave your server running all the time in the summer though? I think the concrete will heat up to a certain point and not dissipate much of the heat, so your cooling would become ineffective.
If you have a backup electric cooling system it's okay; or maybe I'm wrong about the way concrete dissipates heat.
When you say 'either leg of the house power', you don't mean different power phases, do you? You can have great fun with co-connected kit (eg a printer and a server) when they are on separate power phases - sparks can fly!
That's absolute nonsense. It is done all the time, especially in data centers where a pair of outlets on opposing phases is wired with a common neutral. It gives you double the power for just one more conductor. Or for 3-phase, triple the power for two more conductors. It is explicity allowed by NEC (210.4, "mulitiwire circuits") and is perfectly sound wiring practice. Even a UPS will have its own outlets on opposing phases, because it makes for a much more efficient design internally.
Just trying to pass on my own experiences with Alaskan environment and cooling/heating systems.
I plumbed my ENTIRE house with Aqua-pex (no pesky building codes to deal with). And before I did so, I bought a 20 foot length, filled it with water, capped both ends, and set it outside at -40F. It never burst. Even after a few temp swings of about 50F, there was NO noticeable deformation. I seriously doubt you are going to experience such extreme temps. The other advantage of Aqua-pex is that you do not need any joints IN the slab. Any joints in the circuit simply become another possible location for a leak. Aqua-pex also has a very high shear resistance, so if you are in a earthquake prone area, it provides some protection in that regard.
As far as coolant, notice I listed ALCOHOL first. Yes, glycol is not a very good conductor of heat, but it is better then burst pipes (if you insist on using copper). The advantage of alcohol is that it will absorb any moisture you fail to remove from the circuit and dilute it, rather then just have that water pool in one location and continue it's corrosion.
Not sure if anyone else mentioned it, but you need to increase the thickness of the slab (dig deeper dude) wherever you have the circuit as the circuit itself becomes a weak point in the slab. Think perforated paper.
I do not think it will be an issue here, but the one thing I DO know about Aqua-pex--it cannot withstand long-term UV exposure. It will become brittle if exposed to UV light for any length of time. The solution is to simply wrap it with aluminum tape in any location it is exposed, such as outdoors in sunlight.
If the surrounding earth really is at 16 degrees or less and you heat it you would be melting permafrost and your house might sink into the mire. Perhaps you are not using the Fahrenheit scale.
That's probably because any sane modern builder is gonna run the copper pipe across the ceiling. It's a hell of a lot easier, and far less likely for the pipe to be damaged during installation (the rocks in concrete can pierce the copper).
What happens if the pipe starts leaking? Are you prepared to repair a cracked foundation?
The pipe is laid in the slab, not the foundation.
I am not a crackpot.
He's the dude you need to Make It Right. One place he built on TV (the New Orleans/Hurricane Katrina place) had a geothermal HVAC system, so it's possible.
Of course, when the Slashdot boys see what a hunk of beefcake he is...
...laura
I used to live in the fastest growing suburban community in TX, with decently strong building codes. I watched hundreds of houses go up, and I can assure you that every one I saw had their 1st story cold water lines run in copper in the foundation. It is par for the course here.
Have you watched much Hometime or any other home improvement / build show? Most of their builds in the Southern US seemed to have at least some copper in concrete plumbing.
I'm not sure if you think sharp rocks would puncture copper during the pour, or after it hardens and shifts ever so slightly. But I don't think there is much of a chance of either happening when you use rigid type L copper pipe.
I'm sure that the women will think this is the hottest setup that they have ever seen. Oh baby, look at him, geekboy has a concrete cooled CPU so that his porn pc wont overheat.
-Cnik
Why is it that we haven't built datacenters in places with natural cooling. gives a new meaning to the phrase, sent to siberia.
I know I am not the only one with this obvious Idea.
music lover since 1969
Are you telling me you'll be pouring a concrete slab directly on the ground, without any insulation between it and the soil? That sounds rather wasteful to me... you'll be better off by insulating underneath that slab - hard foam like styrofoam works fine - to save on your heating efforts.
If you want to cool your computer dig deeper (2-3 meter) and bury a coil or length of hose, or put that coil/hose in the lake/stream/other body of water which happens to be flowing past your house to be...
--frank[at]unternet.org
Tye copper will corrode, get condensation, leak and crack the concrete in less then a decade.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I suspect ground source heat pumps don't put the concrete in the heat flow path. I also suspect the entire scientific knowledge of the clown who submitted the article can be summed up as "Huh huh. Concrete sorta feels cold".
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This reply is in support of prior posts, and is only meant to be of an informative nature.
I love hearing about water additives.
Especially when in regards to cooling computer equipment. One commonly sees ethylene-glycol/water mixtures in watercooled rigs. I can't help but wince and then shake my head in disappointment whenever I see the neon green flowing through their Tygon or Primoflex.
Provided as a quick reference: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/thermal-conductivity-liquids-d_1260.html
PC's are not automobiles, and the cooling systems for each have very different requirements. Unfortunately, many PC enthusiasts fail to take this into account. Glycol mixtures will always decrease thermal conductivity within a PC's watercooling system. Additionally, the added viscosity tends to inhibit flow, and wear down centrifugal pump parts prematurely - in much the same manner that submersion systems chew through cooling fans.
In short, using a glycol-based solution within a PC environment is not desirable - ever.
Veterans of the PC watercooling game who have done their research will concur that the best anti-surfactant, anti-fungal agent to use within a PC's watercooling system is Red Line's Water Wetter.
Lastly, plenty of very good reference material on the subject of water cooling (and much, much more) can be found at http://electronics-cooling.com/
It is completely acceptable to bury/embed both hard drawn and annealed copper water tube in concrete. Decades of satisfactory service experience with the use of copper tube for in-floor radiant heating systems, water distribution systems and snow melting systems attest to the compatibility of copper tube embedded, encased or in contact with concrete
I made this mistake when I was in high school, and my chemistry teacher even agreed with me (wrongly).
If you were correct, explosions couldn't occur, because the initial heat released by the initiation would shut down, rather than speed up, the reaction of the remaining mass of explosive.
The only case which I can think of where you could be correct is when there is a/are competing reaction/s which would be sped up even more by the rise in temperature (the reverse reaction in an equilibrium situation), or which remove critical ingredients of the the reaction in question (e.g., the denaturation of an enzyme vs. the reaction which it catalyzes).
use crushed moon rock for the concrete, and a pipe made from the bones of Dwarfs filled with leprechaun tears.
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Back in ye olden back to the land commune days, when we were building cabins and houses on the *extreme cheap*, we tried to scrounge as much building materials as possible, so we used old bed springs and steel bed frames from the dump for "rebar".
copper + sitting on iron rebar + water in concrete slab + alkaline concrete == anode + cathode + electrolyte == battery.
the copper is going to develop a hole bunch of rot-outs from electrolytic corrosion, and your cooling is going away without notice.
if you haven't poured yet, either put in stainless steel piping, or pex.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
I'm maybe moving to a house that has a cellar with a well in it, an active one that water flows through, so the cellar is damp and maybe slightly cooler than normal.
Would the cellar not automatically act as a sort of cheap ground source heat pump, in terms of equalisizing the temperature of the rooms above it?
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Concrete corrodes copper. There are also issues with thermal expansion.
Still, cool idea, as long as you're not going to move your fridge.
I am unfamiliar with Redline Water Wetter, but it sounds like it has many of the properties of alcohol, but with the limitations of alcohol addressed, such as flammability.
Alcohol, and I assume Redline Water Wetter, does not change viscosity to any great extent, and thus my suggesting it first.
One other point. Make sure you purge all the lines of ANY air. Even alcohol can oxidize. A small hand actuated vacuum pump (available at most auto parts stores) should be sufficient to put the system under a decent vacuum.
One thing I am unsure of is conductivity in event of a leak INSIDE your PC. I really have no information in that regard, but I can see it being a concern.
Just make sure the pipe doesn't actually touch the rebar and it should be OK.
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Depends on who you've contracted the work out to.
If you mean who the general contractor is, I think it's him. He said in the forum "I'm doing the house as owner builder".
The contact of your rebar to the copper will setup an galvanic corrosion problems.
He's already said in the forum "Im going to separate the copper so that it is not touching the steel reinforcing bar." Of course, that won't protect him from the concrete (as others have pointed out) but the rebar won't be an issue.
Even if you were to cool a good sized server farm I would think that a good sized automotive radiator in the basement and a pump to circulate the water. I would bet that the radiator wouldn't get warmer than 10F over ambient and no complexity of broken lines in the concrete. A small fan or two to move air through the radiator would increase capacity and lower the temperature rise but I seriously doubt you would need them.
By the way, poured concrete seems to crack at corners of basement windows so be sure you don't bury pipes that cross a potentially notched section of concrete.
Of course, once you insulate it, i suspect that will have a bit of an effect on the cooling properties of the design.
Alcohol, and I assume Redline Water Wetter, does not change viscosity to any great extent, and thus my suggesting it first.
If anything, Water Wetter reduces viscosity. It's primary action is as a surface tension reduction agent. Secondarily, it also prevents corrosion. Unlike ethylene glycol, it doesn't make up a significant fraction of the coolant volume. As I recall, the 17 liter cooling system in my VW required only one 350ml bottle of Water Wetter.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Well it's a good thing no one's ever heard of "tye" copper (google hits = 0), so that won't be an issue. Regular run of the mill drawn copper is perfectly safe poured into concrete. We've been doing it for a long time in the plumbing business with no problems.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
My Linux server is in our basement too. Even in our warm climate (Australia) there's more than enough cool air without some fancy cooling solution. I don't see why the guy needs extra cooling. Isn't his basement not cold enough for a few computers ?
Apparently, pointing out that the emperor is nude is "flamebait" to some assholes. Sheesh!
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Of course, you tested how the copper will react with the concrete... You might want to look into PEX.
I'll second the Red Line water wetter. It decreased the 90*F+ summer weather operating temperature by >15*F in my ZR-1 (no other changes to the cooling system) so heat transfer is significantly improved. Using it in a geothermal water chiller is a great idea!
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Australia generally doesn't insulate (or heat) their floors, the winter temperatures just aren't that cold. The ground temperature is sort-of midway between the cold spring nights (just above freezing) and hot summer days (30 - 35 degC), so the ground is a moderating influence. In winter the cloud cover generally traps the atmospheric heat and overnight temperatures are much milder.
Most of the heat loss/gain is through the ceiling it's most cost effective to insulate there. A small portable gas heater is enough in winter, and a fan or airconditioner in summer.
Doesn't that defeat the purpose of using copper tubing (i.e. its thermal conductivity)?
Also, if you read the rest of the thread leading up to the GP, you'll see that the post you replied to was in response to someone suggesting that building codes were unnecessary (or somehow encroached on private property rights). Sure, it's perfectly safe to install copper tubing in your foundation "if you do it right." And that's exactly what building codes are there for, to ensure that people do it right. Otherwise, you end up with a situation like you have in a lot of developing nations (or even the U.S. a few decades ago) where you have buildings collapsing on people, or constructed without regard to fire safety, etc.
That depends on what you put in the tubing ;)
in north america residential service is 120/240. the transformer has a centre tap on the low side. so you get two 120v legs to the centre tap and 240 between the two legs. i think...
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In North America, most service is 120/240. The house I grew up in -- just down the street from the substation -- had three phase 120/208 power in it. You got 120 by hooking one phase to ground, and 208 by connecting between any two phases.
How many exhaust fans?
Be a damn shame to lose a few thousand dollars of gear because the closet roasted the hardware alive before you noticed that the cheap $20 fan failed.
This is why there's nothing but "aluminum external HDD enclosures" now, instead of those absolute p.o.s. ME-320's with their tiny 2cm fans that quietly die after a year and roast your drive to death. (I'd like to throttle the people responsible for the ME-320).
Better than ducted heating (I could never stand that when I visited the US), but worse than normal radiators, since the convection of warm air lifts all the dust from the floor.
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Our neighbors have frequently speculated on why we have window air conditioners in our closets. I tell them that we grow mushrooms. Fortunately, they don't yet know that half of our home's 200A service is routed out to the garage.
What could possibly go wrong? Fucking ricers.
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just plug them into the same outlet, or power bar.
Because the water will be cooler then ambient air temperature you will get condensation and risk water damage to components. In addition even without high levels of moisture where you are risking drips you still risk enough condensation for mildew. Just think of what your shower generates for mildew... With that much pipe your PC(s) will not be able to warm the water enough to bring it to ambient temperature...
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Those people should have a home inspected before they buy it, then.
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Funny- but lots of houses in Levittown had copper radiant floor systems that failed and were attributed to the copper. We also have houses in Florida and Long Island developing pinhole leaks- either due to impurities in the copper, or environmental degradation. Either way- a single, jointless run of PEX is a hell of a lot safer bet (especially considering it can flex) than a copper pipe that can corrode, has lots of joints, and can't flex.
Couldn't you use the plastic tubing they use now for hot water baseboard heating systems instead of copper? I don't know if it's as conductive as copper, but I'd think if you ran it through the concrete it would have a similar effect.
Another benefit of AquaPEX over copper would be that you needn't worry about the copper contacting the steel reinforcing bar in your slab. Metal to metal contact like that causes all sorts of problems without some sort of dielectric union. The AquaPEX doesn't have the heat transfer capability of copper, true, but what it lacks in thermal conduction could be made up for by simply increasing the amount of linear feet you bury.
And also, as parent has noted, concrete is corrosive. Corrosion is bad.
Cheaper and easier to install is also a good argument for PEX, no? :-)
If you dump it in the slab, it's a maintenance problem. If you bury it in your back yard, well then it's just another heat pump.
Put it under dirt, the big companies insist on it because it simplifies installation, and provides for easy expansion (or potential removal). If it's in the slab, it's yours forever, and if it breaks/proves inadequate, you're out of luck.
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