1y ago

Media Room Cooling Options

Any suggestions on how I could better cool my media room? It’s a small closet spaced room that has a vent from under the house and a ceiling vent (like you’d have in a bathroom). I have sealed off the door so that when the ceiling vent runs, it draws air from under the house as that’s cooler. This tends to work until it’s really hot outside, which then gets my room to about 92F. I’m looking into some very small portable AC units, but would need to vent the air up through the ceiling vent so I’d need the right hose and adapter. Thankfully the BTU of the unit can be quite small since the space is small and the reasonable temperature of this equipment is higher than what I’d consider comfortable to live in myself. Also any considerations for water condensation removal?

Anyone have a setup that they love? Hopefully this isn’t too off topic since it’s more about the meta of their self-hosted physical environment.

5 comments

How much power are you consuming in the closet?

Is your equipment running too hot? Mine seems to run fine at that ambient temperature.
I did a quick search and found there are self-evaporating units that don’t require a condensation drain.

When it's getting up to 92, is the air under the house still cooler?
I'd personally worry that even the smallest A/C unit you can get would be problematic in that small of a space. Might be worth air conditioning the rest of your house and unsealing the door instead.

Maybe a mini split would work? Though, if it has to go up I think that wouldn't work because the lines connecting has water that has to have gravity to drain.

Is there a window in the room the closet is in? I've got a similar setup with a server rack in a closet (no ventilation, though). I recently purchased an in-window Midea AC that can be controlled by Home Assistant.
I have an automation that will kick on the AC if the temperature in the closet rises above a certain amount, and will shut down when it drops below that amount. I just leave the closet door open by about a foot and that seems to be sufficient.
It's probably worth noting that I'm running pretty efficient hardware (35w i7s and a 75w Tesla P4) so it doesn't get super hot, even under heavy load.