As many of you know, tons of gear in small spaces tends to raise temperatures pretty quickly. Not a bad thing during the winter, but in the summer, that can be not only uncomfortable, it can be downright dangerous with fried gear or worse, risk of fire.
Since my listening room and the adjacent equipment room are hyper insulated (my custom home, so went all out for noise suppression), therefore heat has no where to go, so the equipment room heats up at an alarming rate once all the gear is on.
Never mind that the main theater still has a monster CRT front projector that spews heat like hades.
I had been coping with all this relatively OK, as the entire HT has its own dedicated zone off the 5 ton multi-zone central AC. But it was getting expensive to run a 5 ton AC unit that often, and during the winter, we’d have dueling zones, with some zones asking for heat, and the HT asking for cooling. Schizo is the best way to describe the poor HVAC’s controllers state of mind
So, I decided it was time to deal with the cooling problem in a more definitive manner.
The equipment room would be getting its own dedicated AC system.
Next, started a search for the ideal solution, with my criteria being as follows:
The clear solution for this in terms of architecture is the mini-split systems that have the compressor and most of the heavy gear sitting outside, and a small internal exchanger unit the mounts inside on a wall.
But which type? AC only seemed like the no-brainer style, but then they really don’t offer them in really high SEER configs. Next up is a heat-pump mini-split system, these can be had with ultra-efficient variable compressors driven by inverters, and so even though cooling may be called for, if the temp differentials are narrow enough, the compressor is barely ticking over and uses very little power. One can get units with SEER ratings of up to 21 (13 is considered good).
Next, which brand. After much research, I selected a Fujitsu from their Halcyon line, their hyper-efficient 21 SEER rated 12RLQ heat-pump mini-split system. Not only is it an efficiency champ, it is supremely quiet. Both internal and external components have excellent ratings. The internal unit on ‘quiet mode’ is just 22 dB.
Even the loudest mode is still a very modest 43 dB.
So I placed my order a few weeks ago and the install date was this week, and install has started.
[2012 update:] new URL to Halcyon line, even more efficient now: http://www.fujitsugeneral.com/wallmountedRLS2.htm
Since my listening room and the adjacent equipment room are hyper insulated (my custom home, so went all out for noise suppression), therefore heat has no where to go, so the equipment room heats up at an alarming rate once all the gear is on.
Never mind that the main theater still has a monster CRT front projector that spews heat like hades.
I had been coping with all this relatively OK, as the entire HT has its own dedicated zone off the 5 ton multi-zone central AC. But it was getting expensive to run a 5 ton AC unit that often, and during the winter, we’d have dueling zones, with some zones asking for heat, and the HT asking for cooling. Schizo is the best way to describe the poor HVAC’s controllers state of mind
So, I decided it was time to deal with the cooling problem in a more definitive manner.
The equipment room would be getting its own dedicated AC system.
Next, started a search for the ideal solution, with my criteria being as follows:
- Quiet (it is near the HT area after all)
- Enough capacity to cool all the PC’s, network gear and audio gear.
- Minimal footprint inside
- Quiet (can’t stress that enough)
- Efficient - part of the goal is to be greener with electricity (says the guy with a 5KVA audio power supply )
The clear solution for this in terms of architecture is the mini-split systems that have the compressor and most of the heavy gear sitting outside, and a small internal exchanger unit the mounts inside on a wall.
But which type? AC only seemed like the no-brainer style, but then they really don’t offer them in really high SEER configs. Next up is a heat-pump mini-split system, these can be had with ultra-efficient variable compressors driven by inverters, and so even though cooling may be called for, if the temp differentials are narrow enough, the compressor is barely ticking over and uses very little power. One can get units with SEER ratings of up to 21 (13 is considered good).
Next, which brand. After much research, I selected a Fujitsu from their Halcyon line, their hyper-efficient 21 SEER rated 12RLQ heat-pump mini-split system. Not only is it an efficiency champ, it is supremely quiet. Both internal and external components have excellent ratings. The internal unit on ‘quiet mode’ is just 22 dB.
Even the loudest mode is still a very modest 43 dB.
So I placed my order a few weeks ago and the install date was this week, and install has started.
[2012 update:] new URL to Halcyon line, even more efficient now: http://www.fujitsugeneral.com/wallmountedRLS2.htm
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