Its really hard to believe that LTT didn't have Alex for the majority of its existence. Dude can carry videos and has that same level of "jank but knowing when its not a good idea" that Linus does
Linus' insurance company is LTT. If everything fails dramatically, he just has to bring the camera crew and make a few videos out of it. It pays for itself!
since their main scope is to create content, i guess this get dismounted as much as the crazy builds go back to the shelves. and no, there is nothing bad in this
Life tip: record all of your personal items, and everything in your house. If your house burns down the insurance company will likely say your house was empty when it burned
Hey hey come on now. My mother had one about a decade ago and while it might be up there with Multipla competing in the worst looking car category it really isn't nearly the worst car to drive. Sure it had some weird grounding issues but that was an easy fix and it took a couple of months to break the transmission when it was borrowed to an older man who had never before driven a car with automatic transmission and kept yanking the shifter in all the wrong ways while driving (most cars in Finland still to this day have manual transmissions).
I liked my PT Cruiser. Characterful, good looks, nice to drive, useful rear space. Electrics were unreliable and the 2.4 petrol guzzled fuel. The original 2.0 wasn't good. The 2.2 Mercedes diesel was better. I let it go for something more reliable and fuel efficient, but much less interesting...
I cannot tell you guys how much I have missed these janky-styled videos of yours - not every single video HAS to be all professional/"produced". We need MOAR of this!!
my favorite thing about this channel is that no matter how big you've gotten you've never stopped just bs'ing your way through potentially catastrophic projects. Please never change.
Just some notes that came to mind, I'm a nuclear engineer and do some work with heat transfer. One, in the future you're going to want to mount your heat exchangers horizontally versus vertically where possible. It makes bleeding more of a hassle but will reduce the pumping power required to drive water flow while also allowing you to take advantage of convection on the air side. Two, as others have mentioned, you'll want to make some ducting on the air sides to help guide the flow and leverage things like the stack effect. Three, consider taking advantage of simulation tools to help you properly size the system. It would be relatively easy for your engineering team to use Modelica and many available free libraries for HVAC and thermal transfer to create models of your cooling system. It's completely free and very easy for engineers with any level of programming experience to utilize. Companies like Meta use it for modeling their data center cooling and this would be really cool to see. You could easily simulate your current and future mech room heat sources to determine the sizes of heat exchangers and everything to properly size the cooling equipment. And you could examine different configurations of things like pure air cooling, leveraging the pool as a heat sink, different heat exchanger types, etc. Hell, you could even design the system to be partially or purely passive for extra redundancy and to reduce the house load on your solar panels.
And I work with HPC and well the heat exchanger on the back of the rack *has* to be vertical. Thing about it for a minute. Got lots of rear door cooled racks at work. However if he plans on water cooling his rack long term then he will need an appropriate rear door for the rack. They are unfortunately not cheap like over $10k each.
I love how just introducing Alex is enough to let people know that this is gonna be a masterful janky build. Nobody can predict just how janky it's gonna get, but somehow you also can trust that it's gonna work too.
The best way to prototype anything. Janky enough to sketch people out a bit but working just well enough to prove a concept or idea is feasible without spending too much time or cash.
Mechanic here. Since this proof-of-concept worked so well, there are a couple of ways you could easily optimize it, if you're willing to spend a bit more money. Many aftermarket racing radiators are solid, welded aluminum, and most of the radiators for muscle-car era vehicles use a wide design. On top of that, many of them have the option of coming pre-fitted with threaded hose adapters welded directly onto the tanks. Couple that with some 12v shrouded radiator fans that are designed to fit them directly and maximize airflow, and you could have a full server rack heat transfer system right out of the box, minus the tubing.
This is something worth looking into it if the original plans to use the pool are not going to work those aftermarket radiators + fans are no joke they exchange a lot of heat quickly they should be able to handle that server rack with maybe 2 of them, idk what would be the equivalence of watts those radiators are rated for
An aftermarket radiator or two would take this project from jank to a real cooling solution. I think real radiator fans would do wonders too I'm not an expert but I think that many small fans is not very efficient. I also wonder if LTT could get custom radiators built to size and spec
I'm just asking this here because an individual comment probably won't be seen by anyone, but isn't there a risk of the water freezing in the winter? I have to imagine the reason why it wouldn't is due to the water being heated from the server, but if it drops to -30 outside would that be able to drop the water temperature enough to potentially freeze? Not sure how cold it gets in Vancouver, I don't think as cold due to the ocean keeping temps more constant, but where I am in Canada it can definitely drop that low in Winter. Would love to hear if anyone has an explanation on this :)
Or just get a MO-RA3 420x420 rad. Or a Alphacool NexXxoS XT45 1260 SuperNova full copper. Those guys could actually work as car radiators... well, definitely sub-optimally in terms of peak flow rate, but surface area - yeah boi.
@@patricklloyd1797 well since the water is never in contact with the PC parts this would be like a constantly on coolant system on a car plus with the antifreeze that can be added to it still I'm not from a cold place so idk anything more to this neither do I have experience in custom cooling solutions on cars
I love the fact that Linus has managed to make renovating his house into a job for his employees and monetize it. Truly the wonders of the 21st century.
@@JudgmentalFranklin i think it's both, but kinda favor the content think, because this company likes their work mostly and each other which should make those videos fun
@@arg8763 $0.10 per KWh.....wow. At that price I wouldn't worry about anything.The normal price in the Netherlands was 23 euro cents per kWh for the common people, but now with the energy crisis, consumption up to 2800 kWh is a subsidized 0.44 per kWh (per 1-1-2023) and if you go over that, it is just over 90 euro cents per kilowatt hours. What a drama. But nice for the Americans who pay so very little for energy (including the very cheap gasoline price) Greetings from the Netherlands
I want to see a whole house integrated server system that pumps heat into the house in winter and out of the house in summer. That works with the HVAC instead of against it.
You are describing "radiant cooling and heating" the problem is Return on Investment (ROI). Something like a Warmboard system is very solid but compared to forced air it's several decades until you see your money come back. There's another company who does the same for cooling. I've been researching a similar idea for a while now. I thought it would be great to combine a thermal battery or geothermal with solar, then I was like why not just simplify it by running pex tubing into the floor and ceilings but it turns out to be 30k just for the fixtures, system, and engineering. If you have a commercial use case, lots of money to burn (YT channel to write off the costs) and an understanding wife then you can buy your idea now. Otherwise your best bet is solar + battery + geothermal + variable HVAC.
@@charlesnl7 Linus's house is already heated with a hydronic radiant system. All the pipes/etc are ran, and it'd actually be relatively simple to plumb the server radiator into it, with a heat exchanger from the server loop into the home heating loop, and another heat exchanger outside, and then a simple manifold/valve bank to control whether it dumps its heat into the home heating loop or outside.
@@Jutilaje thank you for the information. I didn't know he already had the system installed, maybe I might have accidentally skipped over it. You sound like you know what you are doing but I don't think I'm that confident to do my own HVAC and plumbing. I am learning as I go so hopefully one day I can build my mom a nice house.
While watching this video, I realized something. You guys (the LTT crew) are the reason why I'm so invested in tech so much. The option of "we can't do that" is almost non-existent, and as somebody who works in tech, this was a really good influence to try either new projects, helping customers properly and come up with new ideas. From the bottom of my heart, thank you. You were the motivation throughout the years that was leading by example, not by speech.
I used to work in the plumbing department at a hardware store, and this would 100% be a random project that we would constantly get at least 2 or 3 times a day lol. Takes me back
@@rkan2 lol. No I more or less mean that people want to hook up random things that probably shouldn’t be hooked up together, and it’s the job of the person in the plumbing department to figure out how do make it happen with a random assortment of fittings lol. So I just pictured helping alex with that issue
If the heat generation in the mechanical room is relatively constant all year you could replace your water heater with a heat pump water heater to move the heat from the air into the water for your house for showering and cooking etc. Would cool the room down a fair bit, residential models can typically pull about 4,000 BTU/h out of the air. Cost more than what you did here (~$3,000 CAD) and definitely not as fun but would likely offer real savings if you're heating water with natural gas currently. Fun video!
I have one. It's great. However once it reaches the set temp it doesn't kick on until temperature drops low enough or someone takes a shower. Not sure if it would be enough to keep the room cool but it does take a few degrees off my hot garage temp. Best part is dehumidification too, but then you need a condensate line.
Lower mainland he could probably get away with a heat pump but the winters can get bad down there as well and if it gets to -20 he would be pretty much hooped with a heat pump
@@69clamhunter69 most residential heat pump water heaters sit inside the house so it's taking heat from there as opposed to sitting outside and taking whatever heat it can find in the outdoor air
@stephen mcewen i havent seen an indoor heat pump the ones i have seen and installed are built onto the compressor that doubles as our ac compressor they have been outdoor units and given linus lives in the same province im pretty sure the one he has is similar not saying that you are wrong or nothing just saying that the unit i am guessing he has doesnt work well in colder weather canada has been pushing heat pumps on the folks up north in minus 20-40 weather as opposed to a natural gas furnace even taxing heavily on gas appliances but the thing is their heat pumps they are trying to push dont cut it in the cold weather we see up here
6:0 The issue with the Grundfos circ pump you purchased is that its cast iron made for heating. It WILL rust as its cast iron that will be wet, and because the loop isn't sealed it will be getting freshly oxygenated water all the time. You need a circ pump that is rated for fresh water, for example hot water loop circulator, that is either brass/bronze or stainless, that won't put a bunch of rust into the loop and clog the radiator. 🤠👍
@@muzallisam5068 yes, but that was most likely specd for the future install. that can't be a cheap pump and if it was a throwaway pump, it probably wouldn't be the same model as what was used on that pre existing high end install that likely cost a small fortune.
10 years later Linus: So we are moving again but instead of moving to an existing house we are building our own.. out of Noctua fans and radiators! If your wondering how we are heating our house it's SIMPLE we put pipes form our offices to my house moving all the heat produced from all the computers and servers! Any excess goes to the pool, yes the year round steaming water will get some getting used to but the wife approved it as we basically have our own outdoor hotsprins now!
They just wouldn't insure a flood caused by this. But the reality is when you have enough money, you can have personal insurance funds that are just your own money and not go through an insurance company.
I want Linus to simulate air conditioner failure on the hottest days of Canadian summer so we can find out exactly how hot this server room will get. I predict it won't even be habitable by humans.
The Flex Seal hat is just the best thing to wear to a video like this. Also, could you use the PC heat to heat your house more and reduce your power/gas bill?
Being that its a pt cruiser radiator, its most likely a single pass "top-down" radiator. It will normally flow from inlet on the top to the outlet on the bottom. In this...jank configuration, you have it mounted sideways in a left-right flow. Because of that, you may have an air pocket at the top (technically side) of the rad which would explain the much higher temp readings. If you reorient it with inlet at top and outlet at bottom, it should balance out much more. If it does have an air pocket, you might be able to bleed any air out as well (if you haven't done so already) by just holding the rad with the outlet vertical while pumping. That being said, even if it doesn't have an air pocket, the flow across the radiator at the top (again, technically side) may be hindered because of orientation and you are getting a pocket of slow or non-moving water that builds up heat. If that doesn't fully work, you could reverse the flow to feed from the bottom up (still orienting it with inlet/outlet at top/bottom vs side/side). Another thing to implement in the system is a water detection via raspberry pi or arduino and have an alarm and shutoff in place. If it leaks and gets detected, it can warn you and/or drain the loop thru the floor drain. I'm sure Alex could rig up an Ortho water control valve to act as an emergency open valve. And would make for an interesting video as well.
A few thoughts, you can obtain semi ridgid blue and red water pipes that can be "plumbed in" permanently and look quite good. Get rid of the outside radiator, and use another underground loop of water, it doesn't actually need the pool for heat transfer to work, heck a single run loop of about 2 lines laid with a ditch witch, and the under the frost line, which i likely shallow in ca, will stay the same temp year round so you can model transfer load. temp sensors for water in and out, some out in the loop and a Arduino + program can likely optimize motor speeds. Put radiators and sealing panels on back door, sealing panels for front area, sealing boards don't have to be complicated though, signboard is corrugated plastic and can take a screws and bends pretty well. Love the plan, would do something similar myself if i had the house for it.
As the outside heat exchanger you can dig a hole over 1.5 meters deep, throw there spiraled 30 or more meters of PVC pipes, and cover it with dirt. It should keep a stable temperature the whole year round (usually around 5C if you're deep enough). The hole needs to be quite big to spread the piping on the ground, but besides that it's pretty much the best upgrade to your cooling system.
@@sp00n in the army, it used to be a hack that u dig a hole, dump a ration dessert pack in it, wait a couple of hours, and u will have an decently cooled dessert. And that is in the middle of summer
Sadly, this isn't a long term solution. over time the constant heating will warm that ground and it will stop providing cooling. Digging a hole works great short term, but not so much long term. it would work fine if you had a really large area to dump the heat in to where the ground can stabilize, but in a small area the ground just gets hot.
Probably repeating what others may say: do not pump the water end to end. Keep the pool side and the rack side in separate loops and use a liquid to liquid heat exchanger between the two. That way you don't have contamination issues, and can drain and maintain each loop separately.
@@Saaj2 Having dealt with chilled water systems, contamination is part of the deal. Also, the anti-corrosion and other chemicals you need to feed in is nasty stuff.
@@TheOtherNEO Of course, corrosion inhibitor and biocide is a given, I thought you were talking about contamination re. pool water and cooling water mixing
I think they should just open the door as Alex suggested at 0:45 . Allow the heat to flow into the house. In Canada in the winter that seems like a good option. Maybe install a vent in the door.
As a mechanical engineer one of my favorite pass times is watching electrical engineers or software engineers try to do mechanical things. Always a recipe for the lawlz
@@prospersikhwari5289 Also a huge difference maker is how wet/dry the air is, both on the warm and cold side of things. From where live in Norway (south-eastern part), I've had people living all the way up north saying it was colder down here than up there even if the difference in temperature was at least by -10 degrees celcius. This is due to the air being more humid/wet compared to the dry air up north.
I absolutely adore the chemistry the staff has with each other. I think my favorite is a tie between the bromance of Linus and Jake and this "We don't have a plan B" vibe with Linus and Alex. I laugh every time at these videos. Have a great holiday!
This video hit my sweet spot! My profession was previously L2L Heat Exchanger Design and is now Data Center Cooling Pipe Design! The little brazed plate job from alpha laval would have been fine with process/pool water and PG/EG solution. They make versions out of nickel which would probably do the trick. I would personally probably go with one of the readily available shell/tube designs that they commonly use for pool heat (ej bowman makes some). So far as driving air for hot/cold isle we don't really use box fans, or any style of axial fan. They don't perform well with higher static load (ie. blowing or pulling through a coil), instead we use centrifugal or radial fans, which allow us to overcome 2-4"wg of static and still make the airflow we need. As a side note, they do make a fairly affordable NPT to Barb transition in PVC and/or Nylon (Ooof, that's a lot of brass, lol).
I was recently watching some old LTT watercooling videos, and there were a lot of comments jokingly saying he would eventually water cool his house... Yet here we are
can we all appreciate how far Alex has come in engineering something. like legit this is a much better design than alex would have made when he became the defacto engineer for linus.
The best part is when Linus flips out, knowing damn well he has enough money to put his entire extended family through college without even flinching lol
Team member says cost of something. Linus who has approved (or asked Yvonne to approve) the purchase and is confident it’ll ultimately make them money: 😵
Hybrid hot water heater. I did the exact same thing in my house but I put a Rheem heat pump hybrid water heater in my server room. That converted the hot air from my server rack into hot water for the house. Every time you take a shower or wash dishes, you're cooling the server room. Only uses 200 watts.
I strongly appreciate the good old BC boys saying the Canadian units of measurement and absolutely not hiding being from the best province of the best country in the world. Sincerely A guy from Toronto
Actually cool to see that this worked half decently. I plan to do something similar. My server room is setup with a hot/cold aisle like in a DC so my plan is to setup a radiator somewhere in the ceiling on the hot aisle and then suck air through it and dump it back in cold aisle. It will just recirculate through servers and rad. I will then dump the heat into the garage, which I want to heat anyway. I will probably also have a furnace supply/return duct which will have dampers. They'll open as required, such as in summer when AC is running.
It’s been a while since we got a home upgrade video. And hey, the (temporary solution for) home water-cooling is finally happening. Although it’s unfortunate that the pool isn’t done yet, throwing a wrench in everything.
The utilization of waste heat (particularly in data centers) is a very interesting up-and-coming topic in research, I love that Linus' house has become like a microcosm for engineering and cooling technology and the idea of heating the pool (at least partially) with waste heat is excellent.
Just get a ductless mini split. Tons of electrical and server rooms use them for cooling. Get one with a variable speed compressor and you'll hold precise temps in there all year long.
Since I subbed, Linus has now gotten very very good at making me want to watch every video. His comment on WAN show saying they forget people want to know whats going on is very true. Love the house videos that pay for his well deserved house.
One of the cool things about those shark bite fittings is you can push fit copper, cpvc, or pex water lines in one fitting. If you had just used the two sharkbite 90s, and a roll of 3/4" pex tubing, many fittings could have been eliminated.
@@guyod1 im guessing they had the bucket to provide a bit of pressure and allow air to escape, otherwise they would have had to bleed the system. also it would fill any small leaks. also @kevin much prefer the hep2o fittings, work just as well and cheaper
I just don’t understand why he didn’t just put a small mini split ac in the room. There’s clearly a lot of heat generating equipment and with the 20 degree temp split from inside to outside during the winter and even less split in the summer I don’t see this working out well.
@@alexlacey9808 yes that would work. But if you wanted to stick to the idea of no mechanical cooling, I would get a small HVAC fan-coil unit (which are literally just a pre-built coil and a fan, ready to take water) they're pretty cheap and come in a neat small package, also including drainage, to get the condensation out of the coil (which becomes a problem, once you cool down bellow certain temps) . They could also install one of these units outside to dump the heat out, if the heat exchange of the pool wasn't enough to support the load, or a mini cooling tower outside to really take advantage of some, cheap to run, evaporative cooling. So many short and long term, cost effective (but not janky) options to choose from!
@@AlejandroFerrariMc 1:01 I don't understand why not use the AC? It's already there and works with better efficiency than your "project". You could also use a new small AC that you could move inside the house (output heat in another room) to heat it up in the winter while you cool the basement. In the summer just use the main AC or place the small one's output on the outside of the house.
They should really just get a three way valve and an extra heat exchanger. They could tie the server heat into the radiant heater system manifold (that they pointed at while talking about the pump) in the winter, and then switch the valve to pump it to the pool in the summer
I use those fittings all the time. They're amazing. They work on copper PVC pex tubing all of the above. Just a suggestion, I noticed you guys use Teflon tape a lot, I've actually found that rectorseal thread sealant works far better! Love the videos guys! Can't wait for more of the home upgrade videos. Love the home tech
Here is a crazy idea.... Use a heat pump to CAPTURE and UTILIZE the heat to make your house warmer in the winter, then in the summer, you can use it to either pre-heat your hot water using a liquid-liquid heat exchanger or as you mentioned use it to heat your pool. By adding a heat pump to the mix it will maximize the benefit. You can use cold/hot water via insulated pipes to keep the compressor outside or anywhere the noise won't be a problem. Mr. Cool (and others) make DIY mini split heat pumps to help you maximise energy utilization and keep the NAS/PCs nice and chilly year round. Obviously some of the heat flow will change during different temperatures. Good Luck! (BTW PFideo is an alternate German spelling for Video ;) )
+1 to this. A heat pump water heater will/wouldve happily taken the heat in that room and used it to make your hot water. I think I've heard of commercial style heat pumps to move heat within buildings, but the water heater could've been an easy win.
I’m also Team heat pump! The pump takes the energy out of hot air and releasing cool air to the room. The heat could other go to the pool or the house. Also head pumps are crazy efficient!
a heat pump would be the most efficient way to move heat in the first place as you do not need much difference in temp for it to work -difference in air temp
Could he not use a heat pump to upgrade the heat to do things like heat his hot-water tank, before simply dumping it into the outside air? The concentrated heat would be better for the pool too and the concentrated cold for the computers
@@backacheache I'm not sure that he could get a reasonably sized heat pump that would have the BTU capacity to make a noticable difference. I do commercial refrigeration and HVAC (just a dumb apprentice though), and on some of the refrigeration racks we work on they will use piping from the discharge lines on the compressors to pass through 50-70 gallon water tanks which recovers some of that heat and keep a good supply of hot water available. But that's usually 400-800 lbs of refrigerant that's being used 24/7. So to try to use a residential unit to heat a pool is likely not going to have any effect, and if anything it would cause a whole myriad of issues that get too in depth to explain in a comment.
@Neil Carmichael first, residential heat pumps are pretty much a scam unless you have solar, which is pretty much also a scam depending on which company you use. Second, they have hybrid water heaters and heat pump water heaters but no way to include a residential HVAC heat pump in your residential water heater system (that I know of). Heating a pool, if possible, would be entirely too expensive to do with a heat pump. Gas is so much cheaper than electricity, the system itself is cheaper (and less to go wrong). Heat pumps can kiss my ass and if you've got someone that has talked you into a heat pump, go give em a big ol' smack and tell them to get lost. Especially if you're in a colder area, heat pumps like to freeze up when it's cold out (under 40). Also, heat pumps heat isn't any more "concentrated" as, say and 80%er or 90%ers heat concentration. As a matter of fact, it's not as "concentrated." Or more accurately, they create less heat. Actually, they don't create heat, they "relocate it." Heat pump supply air is about 95° at the plenum, furnace is about 115° at the plenum. Gas is also way cheaper than electricity. They trick you into thinking it's saving you money because it takes less energy. True. But they energy it does take costs 8 times as much as gas... by the time you save enough money to make a heat pump worth it, the thing already broke down and you need to spend another 14k for a new one rather than 5k for a conventional system that will last you much longer and be more cost effective. You know that when California is trying to push for heat pumps only, it's a good sign that heat pumps are going to cost you much more in the long run. Alright enough rambling on why heat pumps are utter garbage.
@@johnriff85 That seems a shame, just dumping heat into the outside air seems so wasteful when there is something in the building that would benefit it, is that why at sports clubs you see the a/c dumping the heat rather than pumping into the pool?
@@backacheache Correct. The refrigeration cycle is a balancing act, and depending on your understanding of how it works, attempts to transfer heat take a lot of engineering and careful planning. Pools are a good example because they take so much heat to increase the temperature, and water is the medium used to measure BTUs. Pools are most commonly heated with a boiler, and take a lot of energy to keep warm. There's no feasible way a heat pump can do that. Heat pumps work really well under specific conditions, but are not consistent as a main source of heat. Heat pumps for most of the world will work better as a secondary heating solution just for the fact that there's not enough BTUs produced. The other reason behind seeing the heat dumped is because you may mess up the refrigeration cycle by not condensing at the correct time, and slugging your compressor. One of the other reasons is because building things like economizers on a boiler system, or running extra linesets/coils in an attempt to reclaim heat can get really costly, require more refrigerant which is incredibly expensive, and provide one more point of failure with not a lot of benefits. Heat pumps are cool and can work awesome, but just not for this application. If you're interested in learning a bit more then I'd recommend researching latent heat, calculating a heat load with a Manual J calculation, and understanding the refrigeration cycle. All of that plays in to how a system like this has to be built to meet specific criteria, and why idiots hate heat pumps.
Love the shot of the plumbing zone laid out all nice and neat on the armour plate on the wall compared to this plumbing job. Had a chuckle when Linus was asked about why he did not put the box fan in the door way.
Is this along the lines of all the things you wished you could try with your profession, or an enumeration of exactly why you don’t do these things as part of your profession?
If you want to heat your pool using your server rack heat, use a liquid-liquid heat pump between your indoor and outdoor loops and use a thermostat in the mechanical room to turn the heat pump on-off as needed to maintain whatever temperature you want.
In the Summer time, you could set the radiator up as an evaporative cooler (basically draping a damp cloth over the outdoor radiator) and then you would have an efficient heat exchange... :)
Seems like what you really want is to add an air return vent in that room so your HVAC can take the hot air from the mech room and use it to heat the rest of the house. You would also need a vent in the door or something so the mech room can get some cooler air from the rest of the house.
This 100%! Alex alluded to it at the end of the video but it would make a ton of sense to heat the house with the server heat rather than having a complex solution to dump that heat outdoors. Also not sure if Linus is planning on running water blocks to his pool in the Summer because the current air radiator solution won't have much of a temperature difference with the pool water.
I think the option Alex have at the end of just putting a fan into the door is the better one. Warms the house in the winter and in the summer the HVAC should take care of the heat.
@@Alex_1A Yes exactly; AC is in most cases a one-way heat pump. You've got variations where you work with the coolant to an inside heat exchanger; or you add an extra cycle to the machine on the outside with a compact heat exchanger and have a closed coolant cycle in an outside unit and only get cold water from the machine. Just as they do in data center cooling.
@@4203105 You would add a lot of heat into the home making for an uncomfortable indoor climate in the home; Better to separate the cooling load of this room from the rest of the home. An air/water heat pump which cools in winter is very efficient due to the low temperature outside up to COP of 5; it'll have the lowest efficiency in peak summer down to a COP of 3-4.
Or put a vent output on the AC for that room on a zone gate and get a fresh air intake on zone valve for when it's winter so you don't actually have to turn on the AC. Just use cold fresh air from outside
Honestly, even just venting the room to the outside would probably solve overheating 90% of the time. I do stuff like this professionally, residential low voltage and systems integration. We put at least 1 full sized server rack in every house we do and ideally will have a mini-split air conditioner installed in our rack room but even just a fart fan works basically well enough. Plus our systems have amplifiers in them which create more heat than computers.
I’m always surprised how expensive brass fittings are. Even when I know they’re going to be expensive, they somehow cost more than I expect every time I need to buy some.
He is probably going to need to get a 2 to 3 ton Water Chiller unit for this amount of heat load, and for his future needs. He can get one with a built in tank to hold the chilled water from the loop. THis unit will have to be placed outside, probably in a small building, like a pool pump house. This will be for his summer time cooling of his server room, you would then have a mounted outside radiator with fans to bypass the chiller in the winter time (Cooling Tower for loop). The amount of heat load in this room will be quite significant. I am not sure it would not be better and cheaper to just have a separate A/C unit for just the server room that could run year round.
He doesnt have close to 3tons of cooling needed. It is one rack and I would say under 3kW. The room would be like a sauna with more power. It is not an high density rack like we manage at work with 10kW to up to 23kW per rack. 1 ton unit would do the job, or 1.5 if expension. so 12000 to 18000btu mini split unit would be perfect. A partnership with "Mr Cool" would be nice to they diy the installation and get it free. The geothermal idea would require it to be 8ft underground with 600ft or coils per tons of cooling needed. Would stay at 10 celcius all year long. The pool will be frozen in winter and hot in summer, no way to exchange heat efficency. in winter the glycol temp would be so low because the pool is almost empty for winter in Canada. It would get way under the dew point and get water drops on all conduits and pc.
Or open the door as Alex suggests at 0:45. Allow the heat to flow up and into the house. You could install some vents in the door for a more hi-tech feeling solution.
@@TexMex421 oh yeah, when he said that the light bulb went off. Why throw away all that "free" heat, in the winter at least. In the summer something else may need to be done.
@@2bagsOfChips2k2 I love the channel, but sometimes it feels like they are a little desperate for a topic. Did you catch Linus saying there were no windows in the basement, and then going outside and sitting next to basement windows? 9:09 🤪
Looks like a really fun experiment. Keep an eye out for condensation. Might be time to build yourself a mini cooling tower. Do it right and you can cool your house with it too.
You could use a cooling liquid like R134a to make a real heatpump and use presure differentials to get to 'extreme cooling' . I am pretty sure you have some engineers that could make this happen.
This makes me wonder if you already knew you would plant a big server somewhere in your basement of your new house (whether this house was already existent or newly build) was it not just more easier to create a wind flow within that basement? A while ago there was a video about the 'daddy' of all fans, but still I believe there could be even bigger fans that could be used to create a constant airflow through your basement and in a perfect world the main server straight in the middle of it.
I would recommend a combination of a stand-alone heat pump for water heaters (I thought I saw a water heater) and a mini split unit for the room. Run the mini split at 70f, and the water heater will pull it down further.
I was thinking this exact same thing. That room is *perfect* for a heat pump / mini-split. Trying to do this with water isn't a very good idea. Why? Because when something goes wrong with water it can destroy your entire house in an instant. Nothing bad will happen with a heat pump / mini-split except the room will get really hot again which a thermostat with an alarm should take care of. Shouldn't be a problem to get it installed in there after the fact with a mini split. I know they aren't saying this is the best way to do this and they poke fun at their idea throughout it. I just appreciated your comment on a more sane solution as I didn't hear them at any point in the video say "hey, if you're setting up hot equipment in basically a closet like this, that is where you would use a mini split / heat pump normally". All the facilities I worked on that had server rooms / closets had these.
Almost always Alex says he spent some money and Linus is shocked, and sometimes when he isn't there's a catch that is another actually shocking number.
been an auto tech for 17 years and love pc gaming and building. not at the point of a server, but using an automotive radiator and fans is pretty cool imo. if you need more cooling id recommend a rad from a light duty diesel would be the way to go, the pt cruiser rad is pretty small considering what is actually available for under $200 usd. im still bringing myself up to speed on the comp side, but if i do know one thing, it is heat exchange properties.
i see your waterheater is in the same room. would be awesome to run the water trough a fluid heat exchanger and use it to preheat an insulated tank filled with water to preheat the water for the waterheater or in home heating in winter edit: if its overheating you can dump the water in the pool and topup with tapwater
@@nickdiepenbroek I think I saw the install on this old house and they didn't have to deal with any refrigerant. Just run a water line to existing hot water tank
@@nickdiepenbroek th-cam.com/video/YeMqq5T2dCQ/w-d-xo.html Yup, no difference between this install and a resistor based water heater. Maybe add a condensate pump
The lines running to the foundation of the pool have more than enough radiative capacity to cool the server room. Although you would need to think about what happens if a cold snap hits that also happens with an electricity loss leaving water filled pipes outside without any flow. So either mix in glycol or have an air compressor you can use to purge the lines of water. The system should work fine out side of summer, and during the peak of summer your house AC can open a vent and dump cool air. The crazy efficiency would be to take the condenser of the AC (the outside part that gets hot) and water cool that feeding into the pool. Although if you did that you would need a bypass switch if you wanted to run your AC has a heat pump for heat in the winter.
i don't know if someone different from usual edited this, but it's done very well. sometimes i have a hard time watching through a whole video but this one went by real fast and some of the edits added to the video
Alex is the king of knowing a ton about technical stuff but having 0 fear of coming up with the most jank duct-taped together solution for any problem that should usually require expensive specialized equipment.
whoever did the hvacr load calculations for this house and designed the system should of used a heat recovery chiller you could then use a water source fain coil unit to cool this room.
With the 3D printer on the bench, I feel the need to point out that you can 3D print hose barbs that are very pressure tolerant - which is what I did at home. You know, like 0.30 $ worth of plastic instead of 300$ worth of fittings.
universal radiator fans. normally water resistant. normally cheap. Normally powerful enough and simple. Manual transmission radiators or just plumb the automatic trans cooler inline with the rest. gmt800/900 have a good radiator design. love the jank videos. that could serve an outside solution for the time being and give it cover. the universal radiator fans are normally very splash resistant. Run them slow outside and boom. maximum jank.
Its really hard to believe that LTT didn't have Alex for the majority of its existence. Dude can carry videos and has that same level of "jank but knowing when its not a good idea" that Linus does
I consider it to be 'Genius-level DIY' whereby it is in no way genius
hasn't he been at the team since like 2015? that's more than half of LMG's existance
When I saw the janky powersupply I died
He's like Linus if he'd finished an engineering degree
The dude can't even put PTFE tape on the right way, he aint that good lol.
Linus's insurance company has to be so grateful for all of his documentation of things that aren't covered
this DEFINITELY WINS the internet this week!
Linus' insurance company is LTT. If everything fails dramatically, he just has to bring the camera crew and make a few videos out of it. It pays for itself!
High brow humor, stuff like this is rare nowadays (online)
since their main scope is to create content, i guess this get dismounted as much as the crazy builds go back to the shelves. and no, there is nothing bad in this
Life tip: record all of your personal items, and everything in your house. If your house burns down the insurance company will likely say your house was empty when it burned
This is definitely the best use of a PT Cruiser I’ve ever seen.
Yes, the best use for the whole car.
totally true.
I almost yoinked a turbo from one for giggles. But it turned out to be the reason the whole car was tossed...
Facts
Hey hey come on now. My mother had one about a decade ago and while it might be up there with Multipla competing in the worst looking car category it really isn't nearly the worst car to drive. Sure it had some weird grounding issues but that was an easy fix and it took a couple of months to break the transmission when it was borrowed to an older man who had never before driven a car with automatic transmission and kept yanking the shifter in all the wrong ways while driving (most cars in Finland still to this day have manual transmissions).
I liked my PT Cruiser. Characterful, good looks, nice to drive, useful rear space. Electrics were unreliable and the 2.4 petrol guzzled fuel. The original 2.0 wasn't good. The 2.2 Mercedes diesel was better. I let it go for something more reliable and fuel efficient, but much less interesting...
I cannot tell you guys how much I have missed these janky-styled videos of yours - not every single video HAS to be all professional/"produced". We need MOAR of this!!
Agreed. It seems like the videos have become more and more produced. And I don’t know what to feel about it
@@rabusse Even this was very heavily produced. Nothing like the old water cooling video.
my favorite thing about this channel is that no matter how big you've gotten you've never stopped just bs'ing your way through potentially catastrophic projects. Please never change.
Alex' jank adventures are honestly my favourite part of LTT as a whole in terms of entertainment value.
Just some notes that came to mind, I'm a nuclear engineer and do some work with heat transfer. One, in the future you're going to want to mount your heat exchangers horizontally versus vertically where possible. It makes bleeding more of a hassle but will reduce the pumping power required to drive water flow while also allowing you to take advantage of convection on the air side. Two, as others have mentioned, you'll want to make some ducting on the air sides to help guide the flow and leverage things like the stack effect. Three, consider taking advantage of simulation tools to help you properly size the system. It would be relatively easy for your engineering team to use Modelica and many available free libraries for HVAC and thermal transfer to create models of your cooling system. It's completely free and very easy for engineers with any level of programming experience to utilize. Companies like Meta use it for modeling their data center cooling and this would be really cool to see. You could easily simulate your current and future mech room heat sources to determine the sizes of heat exchangers and everything to properly size the cooling equipment. And you could examine different configurations of things like pure air cooling, leveraging the pool as a heat sink, different heat exchanger types, etc. Hell, you could even design the system to be partially or purely passive for extra redundancy and to reduce the house load on your solar panels.
It's strange running into a nuke in the wild! What kind of work do you do normally, if you don't mind me asking
And I work with HPC and well the heat exchanger on the back of the rack *has* to be vertical. Thing about it for a minute. Got lots of rear door cooled racks at work. However if he plans on water cooling his rack long term then he will need an appropriate rear door for the rack. They are unfortunately not cheap like over $10k each.
This guy cools
You always know when someone didn't make it to the end of the video
i've always wanted to see a computer cooled by NaK, i'm a chemist, you a nuclear engineer, commenting under a big youtube channel. what could go wrong
I love how just introducing Alex is enough to let people know that this is gonna be a masterful janky build. Nobody can predict just how janky it's gonna get, but somehow you also can trust that it's gonna work too.
The best way to prototype anything. Janky enough to sketch people out a bit but working just well enough to prove a concept or idea is feasible without spending too much time or cash.
The change from exasperation to astonishment when Alex said “I spent like $300” was comedic gold
On probably just fittings and tubing . The pump is another few hundred
Mechanic here. Since this proof-of-concept worked so well, there are a couple of ways you could easily optimize it, if you're willing to spend a bit more money. Many aftermarket racing radiators are solid, welded aluminum, and most of the radiators for muscle-car era vehicles use a wide design. On top of that, many of them have the option of coming pre-fitted with threaded hose adapters welded directly onto the tanks. Couple that with some 12v shrouded radiator fans that are designed to fit them directly and maximize airflow, and you could have a full server rack heat transfer system right out of the box, minus the tubing.
This is something worth looking into it if the original plans to use the pool are not going to work those aftermarket radiators + fans are no joke they exchange a lot of heat quickly they should be able to handle that server rack with maybe 2 of them, idk what would be the equivalence of watts those radiators are rated for
An aftermarket radiator or two would take this project from jank to a real cooling solution. I think real radiator fans would do wonders too I'm not an expert but I think that many small fans is not very efficient. I also wonder if LTT could get custom radiators built to size and spec
I'm just asking this here because an individual comment probably won't be seen by anyone, but isn't there a risk of the water freezing in the winter? I have to imagine the reason why it wouldn't is due to the water being heated from the server, but if it drops to -30 outside would that be able to drop the water temperature enough to potentially freeze? Not sure how cold it gets in Vancouver, I don't think as cold due to the ocean keeping temps more constant, but where I am in Canada it can definitely drop that low in Winter.
Would love to hear if anyone has an explanation on this :)
Or just get a MO-RA3 420x420 rad. Or a Alphacool NexXxoS XT45 1260 SuperNova full copper. Those guys could actually work as car radiators... well, definitely sub-optimally in terms of peak flow rate, but surface area - yeah boi.
@@patricklloyd1797 well since the water is never in contact with the PC parts this would be like a constantly on coolant system on a car plus with the antifreeze that can be added to it still I'm not from a cold place so idk anything more to this neither do I have experience in custom cooling solutions on cars
I love that every time Alex is about to do some Janky stuff he's wearing a flex seal hat.
... He's always wearing a flex seal hat
So yes 🤣
Cuz flex seal is a janky but valid fix lol
Haha, totally had not noticed that.:)
They should turn an LTT backpack into a whole body water-cooling suit.
Linus: 10K on a PC is Fine
Alex: I spent Like 300$
Linus: Shut Up 😱
$9950 of that PC is parts from his sponsors/"Borrowed" from work. The $300 is cold hard cash out of Linus' pockets XD
I am continually impressed how expensive threaded plumbing fittings are.
99.99% of that money for the pc is from sponsors + linus spend a quarter of a million on framework industries
"800$ for a liquid pc cooler is unreasonable" Linus Sebastian 2023
alex being both the voice of reason and the voice of chaos and linus just dying. this is why i watch ltt
420th like
@Ian Visser as it should be xD
When linus gives Alex the corporate card it's always a good episode
Fr
I love the fact that Linus has managed to make renovating his house into a job for his employees and monetize it. Truly the wonders of the 21st century.
he does this to get the buissness expence tax write off
@@JudgmentalFranklin i think it's both, but kinda favor the content think, because this company likes their work mostly and each other which should make those videos fun
1 thing is clear. The price of electricity in America is apparently very low.
@@henkholdingastate $.10/kWh where I am, so yes it's pretty cheap. No idea how that converts where you are.
@@arg8763 $0.10 per KWh.....wow. At that price I wouldn't worry about anything.The normal price in the Netherlands was 23 euro cents per kWh for the common people, but now with the energy crisis, consumption up to 2800 kWh is a subsidized 0.44 per kWh (per 1-1-2023) and if you go over that, it is just over 90 euro cents per kilowatt hours. What a drama. But nice for the Americans who pay so very little for energy (including the very cheap gasoline price) Greetings from the Netherlands
I want to see a whole house integrated server system that pumps heat into the house in winter and out of the house in summer. That works with the HVAC instead of against it.
You are describing "radiant cooling and heating" the problem is Return on Investment (ROI). Something like a Warmboard system is very solid but compared to forced air it's several decades until you see your money come back. There's another company who does the same for cooling.
I've been researching a similar idea for a while now. I thought it would be great to combine a thermal battery or geothermal with solar, then I was like why not just simplify it by running pex tubing into the floor and ceilings but it turns out to be 30k just for the fixtures, system, and engineering.
If you have a commercial use case, lots of money to burn (YT channel to write off the costs) and an understanding wife then you can buy your idea now. Otherwise your best bet is solar + battery + geothermal + variable HVAC.
@@charlesnl7 exactly ! --> make a video out of it and ROI is positive off the chards again
@@charlesnl7 Linus's house is already heated with a hydronic radiant system. All the pipes/etc are ran, and it'd actually be relatively simple to plumb the server radiator into it, with a heat exchanger from the server loop into the home heating loop, and another heat exchanger outside, and then a simple manifold/valve bank to control whether it dumps its heat into the home heating loop or outside.
@@Jutilaje thank you for the information. I didn't know he already had the system installed, maybe I might have accidentally skipped over it.
You sound like you know what you are doing but I don't think I'm that confident to do my own HVAC and plumbing. I am learning as I go so hopefully one day I can build my mom a nice house.
@@charlesnl7 He mentioned the Hydronic system in a previous video, from what I've gathered it's somewhat common in Canada.
I think Linus is addicted to watercooling at this point
I mean who isnt? Its basically how your body gets rid of heat aswell, which means it works. why fix what aint broke
He probably has some quick disconnects hidden in his trunk somewhere.
he basically tried this a decade ago in the old office and it was horrible
"I can stop any time I want, I swear!"
Thermodynamics really is compelling enough to be it's own video farm. And Linus knows it.
While watching this video, I realized something.
You guys (the LTT crew) are the reason why I'm so invested in tech so much.
The option of "we can't do that" is almost non-existent, and as somebody who works in tech, this was a really good influence to try either new projects, helping customers properly and come up with new ideas.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you. You were the motivation throughout the years that was leading by example, not by speech.
I used to work in the plumbing department at a hardware store, and this would 100% be a random project that we would constantly get at least 2 or 3 times a day lol. Takes me back
Dafuq? People cooling their rooms with radiators???
@@rkan2 I mean it's essentially the same thing as a heat pump, but without refrigerants being used to take advantage of state change cooling.
@@rkan2 lol. No I more or less mean that people want to hook up random things that probably shouldn’t be hooked up together, and it’s the job of the person in the plumbing department to figure out how do make it happen with a random assortment of fittings lol. So I just pictured helping alex with that issue
If the heat generation in the mechanical room is relatively constant all year you could replace your water heater with a heat pump water heater to move the heat from the air into the water for your house for showering and cooking etc. Would cool the room down a fair bit, residential models can typically pull about 4,000 BTU/h out of the air. Cost more than what you did here (~$3,000 CAD) and definitely not as fun but would likely offer real savings if you're heating water with natural gas currently. Fun video!
I have one. It's great. However once it reaches the set temp it doesn't kick on until temperature drops low enough or someone takes a shower. Not sure if it would be enough to keep the room cool but it does take a few degrees off my hot garage temp. Best part is dehumidification too, but then you need a condensate line.
I was thinking about home heating the whole time too
Lower mainland he could probably get away with a heat pump but the winters can get bad down there as well and if it gets to -20 he would be pretty much hooped with a heat pump
@@69clamhunter69 most residential heat pump water heaters sit inside the house so it's taking heat from there as opposed to sitting outside and taking whatever heat it can find in the outdoor air
@stephen mcewen i havent seen an indoor heat pump the ones i have seen and installed are built onto the compressor that doubles as our ac compressor they have been outdoor units and given linus lives in the same province im pretty sure the one he has is similar not saying that you are wrong or nothing just saying that the unit i am guessing he has doesnt work well in colder weather canada has been pushing heat pumps on the folks up north in minus 20-40 weather as opposed to a natural gas furnace even taxing heavily on gas appliances but the thing is their heat pumps they are trying to push dont cut it in the cold weather we see up here
6:0 The issue with the Grundfos circ pump you purchased is that its cast iron made for heating. It WILL rust as its cast iron that will be wet, and because the loop isn't sealed it will be getting freshly oxygenated water all the time. You need a circ pump that is rated for fresh water, for example hot water loop circulator, that is either brass/bronze or stainless, that won't put a bunch of rust into the loop and clog the radiator. 🤠👍
Or at least get the loop filled with boiler system rated antifreeze to avoid killing the pump on short order.
its "'temporary'' lol
@@muzallisam5068 yes, but that was most likely specd for the future install. that can't be a cheap pump and if it was a throwaway pump, it probably wouldn't be the same model as what was used on that pre existing high end install that likely cost a small fortune.
@@danl6634 Antifreeze would also protect the outside radiator from freezing.
Alex is my spirit animal, he's lowkey one of the handful of reasons I am studying engineering. Alex if you're seeing this, keep it up lol
Alex Uponor Pex/ Pex A.
the "janky cooling" and "linu's new house" series colliding is great
It's linus' not linu's
@@tgreinpersonal
Thur
in the
city in
Always love seeing Alex. Was a very good addition to the team.
Thanks guys! Very cool!
We try very hard to build a great team.
@@dougr8646 and who are you supposed to be?
@@dougr8646 omg its linus himself... 😃😃😃😃😃😃😃
But why is your username Doug R?
Thanks for the question!
Very cool!
Fun Fact: Alex has been here for 6 years, since 3 million subs.
10 years later Linus: So we are moving again but instead of moving to an existing house we are building our own.. out of Noctua fans and radiators! If your wondering how we are heating our house it's SIMPLE we put pipes form our offices to my house moving all the heat produced from all the computers and servers! Any excess goes to the pool, yes the year round steaming water will get some getting used to but the wife approved it as we basically have our own outdoor hotsprins now!
With how much time and money Linus spent on his house, I genuinely wonder why he didn't build one from scratch.
Hands down funniest thing I've read today. 🤣
he will be moving to datacenter
I want a WAN show segment discussing how linus finds insurance for his house after shenanigans like this lol
simple, don't tell them ;)
They just wouldn't insure a flood caused by this.
But the reality is when you have enough money, you can have personal insurance funds that are just your own money and not go through an insurance company.
I want Linus to simulate air conditioner failure on the hottest days of Canadian summer so we can find out exactly how hot this server room will get. I predict it won't even be habitable by humans.
The Flex Seal hat is just the best thing to wear to a video like this. Also, could you use the PC heat to heat your house more and reduce your power/gas bill?
YT is already taking care of the bills 😜😂😂
since its the basement just blow up the radiator for free underfloor heating
No he is going to dump the heat into the pool, problem being that there is no pool right now
Alex is the greatest king of temporary solutions, I love it
that "shut up!" that Linus released over the $300 connerctor was so genuine, i really had to laugh out loud. poor Linus :D^^
Being that its a pt cruiser radiator, its most likely a single pass "top-down" radiator. It will normally flow from inlet on the top to the outlet on the bottom.
In this...jank configuration, you have it mounted sideways in a left-right flow. Because of that, you may have an air pocket at the top (technically side) of the rad which would explain the much higher temp readings.
If you reorient it with inlet at top and outlet at bottom, it should balance out much more. If it does have an air pocket, you might be able to bleed any air out as well (if you haven't done so already) by just holding the rad with the outlet vertical while pumping.
That being said, even if it doesn't have an air pocket, the flow across the radiator at the top (again, technically side) may be hindered because of orientation and you are getting a pocket of slow or non-moving water that builds up heat.
If that doesn't fully work, you could reverse the flow to feed from the bottom up (still orienting it with inlet/outlet at top/bottom vs side/side).
Another thing to implement in the system is a water detection via raspberry pi or arduino and have an alarm and shutoff in place. If it leaks and gets detected, it can warn you and/or drain the loop thru the floor drain. I'm sure Alex could rig up an Ortho water control valve to act as an emergency open valve. And would make for an interesting video as well.
A few thoughts, you can obtain semi ridgid blue and red water pipes that can be "plumbed in" permanently and look quite good. Get rid of the outside radiator, and use another underground loop of water, it doesn't actually need the pool for heat transfer to work, heck a single run loop of about 2 lines laid with a ditch witch, and the under the frost line, which i likely shallow in ca, will stay the same temp year round so you can model transfer load. temp sensors for water in and out, some out in the loop and a Arduino + program can likely optimize motor speeds. Put radiators and sealing panels on back door, sealing panels for front area, sealing boards don't have to be complicated though, signboard is corrugated plastic and can take a screws and bends pretty well. Love the plan, would do something similar myself if i had the house for it.
Exactly! It's just a geothermal system with a ground loop
As the outside heat exchanger you can dig a hole over 1.5 meters deep, throw there spiraled 30 or more meters of PVC pipes, and cover it with dirt.
It should keep a stable temperature the whole year round (usually around 5C if you're deep enough). The hole needs to be quite big to spread the piping on the ground, but besides that it's pretty much the best upgrade to your cooling system.
That's surprisingly cold
@@sp00n It gets warm once you dig really deep, like hundreds of meters
@@sp00n in the army, it used to be a hack that u dig a hole, dump a ration dessert pack in it, wait a couple of hours, and u will have an decently cooled dessert.
And that is in the middle of summer
Sadly, this isn't a long term solution. over time the constant heating will warm that ground and it will stop providing cooling. Digging a hole works great short term, but not so much long term. it would work fine if you had a really large area to dump the heat in to where the ground can stabilize, but in a small area the ground just gets hot.
This.
Probably repeating what others may say: do not pump the water end to end. Keep the pool side and the rack side in separate loops and use a liquid to liquid heat exchanger between the two. That way you don't have contamination issues, and can drain and maintain each loop separately.
The pipework is buried in the screed of the swimming pool much like underfloor heating so water contamination should not be an issue
@@Saaj2 Having dealt with chilled water systems, contamination is part of the deal. Also, the anti-corrosion and other chemicals you need to feed in is nasty stuff.
@@TheOtherNEO Of course, corrosion inhibitor and biocide is a given, I thought you were talking about contamination re. pool water and cooling water mixing
I think they should just open the door as Alex suggested at 0:45 . Allow the heat to flow into the house. In Canada in the winter that seems like a good option. Maybe install a vent in the door.
As a mechanical engineer one of my favorite pass times is watching electrical engineers or software engineers try to do mechanical things. Always a recipe for the lawlz
Nothing's as permanent as a temporary solution that works.
the zip ties just flying into shot at 8:00 are chef's kiss
Linus experiencing what it's like to live in the tropics and solving it with water cooling really is something I wasn't expecting to see
I was just thinking that these temperatures are kind of a normal day in my country. Then I remembered that for these guys it’s probably torture 😂
@@prospersikhwari5289 They're Canadians, so they melt easily.
So is my car
@@prospersikhwari5289 Also a huge difference maker is how wet/dry the air is, both on the warm and cold side of things. From where live in Norway (south-eastern part), I've had people living all the way up north saying it was colder down here than up there even if the difference in temperature was at least by -10 degrees celcius. This is due to the air being more humid/wet compared to the dry air up north.
@@prospersikhwari5289 But they're Canadians from BC, they don't know what either true cold or true heat is...
I absolutely adore the chemistry the staff has with each other. I think my favorite is a tie between the bromance of Linus and Jake and this "We don't have a plan B" vibe with Linus and Alex. I laugh every time at these videos. Have a great holiday!
As a Journeyman plumber, it is always funny watching Linus struggle with running water lines.
As a refrigeration tech this video shortened my life more than the phosgene I've inhaled previously.
As the President of the United States I love ice cream
Ik he was amazed by them shark bites 😂
This video hit my sweet spot! My profession was previously L2L Heat Exchanger Design and is now Data Center Cooling Pipe Design! The little brazed plate job from alpha laval would have been fine with process/pool water and PG/EG solution. They make versions out of nickel which would probably do the trick. I would personally probably go with one of the readily available shell/tube designs that they commonly use for pool heat (ej bowman makes some). So far as driving air for hot/cold isle we don't really use box fans, or any style of axial fan. They don't perform well with higher static load (ie. blowing or pulling through a coil), instead we use centrifugal or radial fans, which allow us to overcome 2-4"wg of static and still make the airflow we need. As a side note, they do make a fairly affordable NPT to Barb transition in PVC and/or Nylon (Ooof, that's a lot of brass, lol).
"No, the worst that can happen is my house both floods, and catches on fire at the same time"
I almost spit out my lunch with that line 🤣🤣
Linus is gonna watercool the world at this point 😂
The world technically is watercooled 🗿
nah bro linus be putting a water block on the universe
He gonna water cool. Earth to stop global warming.
Lol
@@JacobLiu-fs7yq We need next level AC cooling next
I was recently watching some old LTT watercooling videos, and there were a lot of comments jokingly saying he would eventually water cool his house...
Yet here we are
I genuinely want an update on how well this is working.
can we all appreciate how far Alex has come in engineering something. like legit this is a much better design than alex would have made when he became the defacto engineer for linus.
I love when anyone from the LTT team tells Linus how much of his money they spent on things 😂
The best part is when Linus flips out, knowing damn well he has enough money to put his entire extended family through college without even flinching lol
Team member says cost of something.
Linus who has approved (or asked Yvonne to approve) the purchase and is confident it’ll ultimately make them money: 😵
@@Hami10101 Wiat, THIS is the 2k that I signed for? Holding the tiniest piece of metal.
Hybrid hot water heater. I did the exact same thing in my house but I put a Rheem heat pump hybrid water heater in my server room. That converted the hot air from my server rack into hot water for the house. Every time you take a shower or wash dishes, you're cooling the server room. Only uses 200 watts.
I strongly appreciate the good old BC boys saying the Canadian units of measurement and absolutely not hiding being from the best province of the best country in the world.
Sincerely
A guy from Toronto
Seeing Alex and Linus together never gets old. Great chemistry
The chemistry reminds me of Phineas and Ferb.
The jank but works kings fr
As someone that has does plumbing electrical and machining professionally, it actually hurts to watch sometimes and I'll need to take a break
Yes a Thanksgiving miracle!
Questionable engineering with Alex!
My favorite!
Linus' house is being held together by zip ties, improper fittings, and flex tape... I'm without words
Actually cool to see that this worked half decently. I plan to do something similar. My server room is setup with a hot/cold aisle like in a DC so my plan is to setup a radiator somewhere in the ceiling on the hot aisle and then suck air through it and dump it back in cold aisle. It will just recirculate through servers and rad. I will then dump the heat into the garage, which I want to heat anyway. I will probably also have a furnace supply/return duct which will have dampers. They'll open as required, such as in summer when AC is running.
It’s been a while since we got a home upgrade video. And hey, the (temporary solution for) home water-cooling is finally happening. Although it’s unfortunate that the pool isn’t done yet, throwing a wrench in everything.
The utilization of waste heat (particularly in data centers) is a very interesting up-and-coming topic in research, I love that Linus' house has become like a microcosm for engineering and cooling technology and the idea of heating the pool (at least partially) with waste heat is excellent.
I’d just love to see Alex show up to a random house with a bucket with a hole in the side and see how that goes.
Just get a ductless mini split. Tons of electrical and server rooms use them for cooling. Get one with a variable speed compressor and you'll hold precise temps in there all year long.
Since I subbed, Linus has now gotten very very good at making me want to watch every video. His comment on WAN show saying they forget people want to know whats going on is very true. Love the house videos that pay for his well deserved house.
One of the cool things about those shark bite fittings is you can push fit copper, cpvc, or pex water lines in one fitting. If you had just used the two sharkbite 90s, and a roll of 3/4" pex tubing, many fittings could have been eliminated.
And remove bucket. It should of just been closed loop.
@@guyod1 im guessing they had the bucket to provide a bit of pressure and allow air to escape, otherwise they would have had to bleed the system. also it would fill any small leaks. also @kevin much prefer the hep2o fittings, work just as well and cheaper
Man, as an HVAC and BMS designer, there's so much I'd like to do to this setup... It gets me excited that you're doing this.
I just don’t understand why he didn’t just put a small mini split ac in the room. There’s clearly a lot of heat generating equipment and with the 20 degree temp split from inside to outside during the winter and even less split in the summer I don’t see this working out well.
@@alexlacey9808 yes that would work. But if you wanted to stick to the idea of no mechanical cooling, I would get a small HVAC fan-coil unit (which are literally just a pre-built coil and a fan, ready to take water) they're pretty cheap and come in a neat small package, also including drainage, to get the condensation out of the coil (which becomes a problem, once you cool down bellow certain temps) .
They could also install one of these units outside to dump the heat out, if the heat exchange of the pool wasn't enough to support the load, or a mini cooling tower outside to really take advantage of some, cheap to run, evaporative cooling.
So many short and long term, cost effective (but not janky) options to choose from!
@@alexlacey9808 yes, didn't he also have the main AC system pass through there? Why not use that?
@@AlejandroFerrariMc 1:01 I don't understand why not use the AC? It's already there and works with better efficiency than your "project".
You could also use a new small AC that you could move inside the house (output heat in another room) to heat it up in the winter while you cool the basement. In the summer just use the main AC or place the small one's output on the outside of the house.
@@Albtraum_TDDC My ideas were based on the premise of the video "Water cooling my house". Different from "I installed a heat pump" ;)
They should really just get a three way valve and an extra heat exchanger. They could tie the server heat into the radiant heater system manifold (that they pointed at while talking about the pump) in the winter, and then switch the valve to pump it to the pool in the summer
I use those fittings all the time. They're amazing. They work on copper PVC pex tubing all of the above. Just a suggestion, I noticed you guys use Teflon tape a lot, I've actually found that rectorseal thread sealant works far better! Love the videos guys! Can't wait for more of the home upgrade videos. Love the home tech
Rectorseal? I barley even knew her
Here is a crazy idea....
Use a heat pump to CAPTURE and UTILIZE the heat to make your house warmer in the winter, then in the summer, you can use it to either pre-heat your hot water using a liquid-liquid heat exchanger or as you mentioned use it to heat your pool. By adding a heat pump to the mix it will maximize the benefit. You can use cold/hot water via insulated pipes to keep the compressor outside or anywhere the noise won't be a problem. Mr. Cool (and others) make DIY mini split heat pumps to help you maximise energy utilization and keep the NAS/PCs nice and chilly year round. Obviously some of the heat flow will change during different temperatures.
Good Luck! (BTW PFideo is an alternate German spelling for Video ;) )
As a German - no it is most certainly not an alternate spelling.
+1 to this. A heat pump water heater will/wouldve happily taken the heat in that room and used it to make your hot water. I think I've heard of commercial style heat pumps to move heat within buildings, but the water heater could've been an easy win.
I’m also Team heat pump! The pump takes the energy out of hot air and releasing cool air to the room. The heat could other go to the pool or the house. Also head pumps are crazy efficient!
Condensation should be accounted for.
a heat pump would be the most efficient way to move heat in the first place as you do not need much difference in temp for it to work
-difference in air temp
As an HVAC dude, I appreciate the craftsmanship and attention to detail your technician put into the furnace install.
Could he not use a heat pump to upgrade the heat to do things like heat his hot-water tank, before simply dumping it into the outside air? The concentrated heat would be better for the pool too and the concentrated cold for the computers
@@backacheache I'm not sure that he could get a reasonably sized heat pump that would have the BTU capacity to make a noticable difference. I do commercial refrigeration and HVAC (just a dumb apprentice though), and on some of the refrigeration racks we work on they will use piping from the discharge lines on the compressors to pass through 50-70 gallon water tanks which recovers some of that heat and keep a good supply of hot water available. But that's usually 400-800 lbs of refrigerant that's being used 24/7. So to try to use a residential unit to heat a pool is likely not going to have any effect, and if anything it would cause a whole myriad of issues that get too in depth to explain in a comment.
@Neil Carmichael first, residential heat pumps are pretty much a scam unless you have solar, which is pretty much also a scam depending on which company you use. Second, they have hybrid water heaters and heat pump water heaters but no way to include a residential HVAC heat pump in your residential water heater system (that I know of). Heating a pool, if possible, would be entirely too expensive to do with a heat pump. Gas is so much cheaper than electricity, the system itself is cheaper (and less to go wrong). Heat pumps can kiss my ass and if you've got someone that has talked you into a heat pump, go give em a big ol' smack and tell them to get lost. Especially if you're in a colder area, heat pumps like to freeze up when it's cold out (under 40). Also, heat pumps heat isn't any more "concentrated" as, say and 80%er or 90%ers heat concentration. As a matter of fact, it's not as "concentrated." Or more accurately, they create less heat. Actually, they don't create heat, they "relocate it." Heat pump supply air is about 95° at the plenum, furnace is about 115° at the plenum. Gas is also way cheaper than electricity. They trick you into thinking it's saving you money because it takes less energy. True. But they energy it does take costs 8 times as much as gas... by the time you save enough money to make a heat pump worth it, the thing already broke down and you need to spend another 14k for a new one rather than 5k for a conventional system that will last you much longer and be more cost effective. You know that when California is trying to push for heat pumps only, it's a good sign that heat pumps are going to cost you much more in the long run. Alright enough rambling on why heat pumps are utter garbage.
@@johnriff85 That seems a shame, just dumping heat into the outside air seems so wasteful when there is something in the building that would benefit it, is that why at sports clubs you see the a/c dumping the heat rather than pumping into the pool?
@@backacheache Correct. The refrigeration cycle is a balancing act, and depending on your understanding of how it works, attempts to transfer heat take a lot of engineering and careful planning. Pools are a good example because they take so much heat to increase the temperature, and water is the medium used to measure BTUs. Pools are most commonly heated with a boiler, and take a lot of energy to keep warm. There's no feasible way a heat pump can do that. Heat pumps work really well under specific conditions, but are not consistent as a main source of heat. Heat pumps for most of the world will work better as a secondary heating solution just for the fact that there's not enough BTUs produced. The other reason behind seeing the heat dumped is because you may mess up the refrigeration cycle by not condensing at the correct time, and slugging your compressor. One of the other reasons is because building things like economizers on a boiler system, or running extra linesets/coils in an attempt to reclaim heat can get really costly, require more refrigerant which is incredibly expensive, and provide one more point of failure with not a lot of benefits. Heat pumps are cool and can work awesome, but just not for this application.
If you're interested in learning a bit more then I'd recommend researching latent heat, calculating a heat load with a Manual J calculation, and understanding the refrigeration cycle. All of that plays in to how a system like this has to be built to meet specific criteria, and why idiots hate heat pumps.
When Linus said "How does that work, that's like magic" it was so adorable I wanted to adopt him even though we're about the same age.
Love the shot of the plumbing zone laid out all nice and neat on the armour plate on the wall compared to this plumbing job. Had a chuckle when Linus was asked about why he did not put the box fan in the door way.
As an HVAC engineer these videos are just the best and so fun to watch :)
Is this along the lines of all the things you wished you could try with your profession, or an enumeration of exactly why you don’t do these things as part of your profession?
@@TAP7a I'd assume both lol
Even funnier when your a HVAC tech building and working on the exact systems they are attempting to copy
If you want to heat your pool using your server rack heat, use a liquid-liquid heat pump between your indoor and outdoor loops and use a thermostat in the mechanical room to turn the heat pump on-off as needed to maintain whatever temperature you want.
In the Summer time, you could set the radiator up as an evaporative cooler (basically draping a damp cloth over the outdoor radiator) and then you would have an efficient heat exchange... :)
Seems like what you really want is to add an air return vent in that room so your HVAC can take the hot air from the mech room and use it to heat the rest of the house. You would also need a vent in the door or something so the mech room can get some cooler air from the rest of the house.
Good for the winter, less than ideal for the summer
This 100%! Alex alluded to it at the end of the video but it would make a ton of sense to heat the house with the server heat rather than having a complex solution to dump that heat outdoors. Also not sure if Linus is planning on running water blocks to his pool in the Summer because the current air radiator solution won't have much of a temperature difference with the pool water.
Just keep an eye out for condensation now during the winter. A lot of water can end up somewhere you really don't want it.
Just put a air to water heatpump outside and connect it to the server. You’ll get down to 6 degree water very efficiently.
I think the option Alex have at the end of just putting a fan into the door is the better one. Warms the house in the winter and in the summer the HVAC should take care of the heat.
Reverse cycle aircon… better efficiency, and the tubes other the lack of insulation would work fine.
Head inside with pump outside
So AC? AC units are literally just one way heat pumps.
@@Alex_1A Yes exactly; AC is in most cases a one-way heat pump. You've got variations where you work with the coolant to an inside heat exchanger; or you add an extra cycle to the machine on the outside with a compact heat exchanger and have a closed coolant cycle in an outside unit and only get cold water from the machine. Just as they do in data center cooling.
@@4203105 You would add a lot of heat into the home making for an uncomfortable indoor climate in the home; Better to separate the cooling load of this room from the rest of the home. An air/water heat pump which cools in winter is very efficient due to the low temperature outside up to COP of 5; it'll have the lowest efficiency in peak summer down to a COP of 3-4.
Or put a vent output on the AC for that room on a zone gate and get a fresh air intake on zone valve for when it's winter so you don't actually have to turn on the AC. Just use cold fresh air from outside
Honestly, even just venting the room to the outside would probably solve overheating 90% of the time. I do stuff like this professionally, residential low voltage and systems integration. We put at least 1 full sized server rack in every house we do and ideally will have a mini-split air conditioner installed in our rack room but even just a fart fan works basically well enough. Plus our systems have amplifiers in them which create more heat than computers.
All in my head when I was watching this is "Get an Air Con / Heat Pump, problem solved"
Hell yeah, it's my favorite show - sketchy cooling solutions with Alex
I’m always surprised how expensive brass fittings are. Even when I know they’re going to be expensive, they somehow cost more than I expect every time I need to buy some.
12:02 there’s no windows - except the one running on the computers eyyyyyyyyy got em!
I love how so many of LTT videos are just coming up with some janky solutions to solve self inflicted problems.
No one has a setup quite like Linus’s
it prints money!
Been waiting for this eventual test for a LONG time. What's next for smaller rooms? Motorcycle rads?
I felt the freaking dad rage Linus got at 4:10 on the egregious cash used for that whole contraption.
Related.
He is probably going to need to get a 2 to 3 ton Water Chiller unit for this amount of heat load, and for his future needs. He can get one with a built in tank to hold the chilled water from the loop. THis unit will have to be placed outside, probably in a small building, like a pool pump house. This will be for his summer time cooling of his server room, you would then have a mounted outside radiator with fans to bypass the chiller in the winter time (Cooling Tower for loop). The amount of heat load in this room will be quite significant. I am not sure it would not be better and cheaper to just have a separate A/C unit for just the server room that could run year round.
He doesnt have close to 3tons of cooling needed. It is one rack and I would say under 3kW. The room would be like a sauna with more power. It is not an high density rack like we manage at work with 10kW to up to 23kW per rack.
1 ton unit would do the job, or 1.5 if expension. so 12000 to 18000btu mini split unit would be perfect.
A partnership with "Mr Cool" would be nice to they diy the installation and get it free.
The geothermal idea would require it to be 8ft underground with 600ft or coils per tons of cooling needed. Would stay at 10 celcius all year long. The pool will be frozen in winter and hot in summer, no way to exchange heat efficency. in winter the glycol temp would be so low because the pool is almost empty for winter in Canada.
It would get way under the dew point and get water drops on all conduits and pc.
Just install a ground loop outside... geothermal
Or open the door as Alex suggests at 0:45. Allow the heat to flow up and into the house. You could install some vents in the door for a more hi-tech feeling solution.
@@TexMex421 oh yeah, when he said that the light bulb went off. Why throw away all that "free" heat, in the winter at least. In the summer something else may need to be done.
@@2bagsOfChips2k2 I love the channel, but sometimes it feels like they are a little desperate for a topic. Did you catch Linus saying there were no windows in the basement, and then going outside and sitting next to basement windows? 9:09 🤪
Looks like a really fun experiment. Keep an eye out for condensation. Might be time to build yourself a mini cooling tower. Do it right and you can cool your house with it too.
You could use a cooling liquid like R134a to make a real heatpump and use presure differentials to get to 'extreme cooling' . I am pretty sure you have some engineers that could make this happen.
This makes me wonder if you already knew you would plant a big server somewhere in your basement of your new house (whether this house was already existent or newly build) was it not just more easier to create a wind flow within that basement? A while ago there was a video about the 'daddy' of all fans, but still I believe there could be even bigger fans that could be used to create a constant airflow through your basement and in a perfect world the main server straight in the middle of it.
I would recommend a combination of a stand-alone heat pump for water heaters (I thought I saw a water heater) and a mini split unit for the room. Run the mini split at 70f, and the water heater will pull it down further.
I was thinking this exact same thing. That room is *perfect* for a heat pump / mini-split.
Trying to do this with water isn't a very good idea. Why? Because when something goes wrong with water it can destroy your entire house in an instant. Nothing bad will happen with a heat pump / mini-split except the room will get really hot again which a thermostat with an alarm should take care of. Shouldn't be a problem to get it installed in there after the fact with a mini split.
I know they aren't saying this is the best way to do this and they poke fun at their idea throughout it. I just appreciated your comment on a more sane solution as I didn't hear them at any point in the video say "hey, if you're setting up hot equipment in basically a closet like this, that is where you would use a mini split / heat pump normally". All the facilities I worked on that had server rooms / closets had these.
This threw me back to the Whole Room Watercooling episode back at the old LTT house.
the way linus said SHUT UP when alex said it cost 300 dollars is to silly
it was epic, i replayed it so many times lol
At 9:40 I thought my internet was dying haha
Almost always Alex says he spent some money and Linus is shocked, and sometimes when he isn't there's a catch that is another actually shocking number.
been an auto tech for 17 years and love pc gaming and building. not at the point of a server, but using an automotive radiator and fans is pretty cool imo. if you need more cooling id recommend a rad from a light duty diesel would be the way to go, the pt cruiser rad is pretty small considering what is actually available for under $200 usd. im still bringing myself up to speed on the comp side, but if i do know one thing, it is heat exchange properties.
i see your waterheater is in the same room. would be awesome to run the water trough a fluid heat exchanger and use it to preheat an insulated tank filled with water to preheat the water for the waterheater or in home heating in winter
edit:
if its overheating you can dump the water in the pool and topup with tapwater
Or install a self contained heat pump water heater which would steal heat from the room. Then just plumb it into the existing home hot water
@@calvinlim9485 that would require refrigerant which you would need a license for. and require more electricity while being less efficient.
@@nickdiepenbroek I think I saw the install on this old house and they didn't have to deal with any refrigerant. Just run a water line to existing hot water tank
@@nickdiepenbroek th-cam.com/video/YeMqq5T2dCQ/w-d-xo.html
Yup, no difference between this install and a resistor based water heater. Maybe add a condensate pump
Every time Linus does one of his crazy radiator experiments, I just remind myself that it's always in the name of science.
The lines running to the foundation of the pool have more than enough radiative capacity to cool the server room. Although you would need to think about what happens if a cold snap hits that also happens with an electricity loss leaving water filled pipes outside without any flow. So either mix in glycol or have an air compressor you can use to purge the lines of water.
The system should work fine out side of summer, and during the peak of summer your house AC can open a vent and dump cool air. The crazy efficiency would be to take the condenser of the AC (the outside part that gets hot) and water cool that feeding into the pool. Although if you did that you would need a bypass switch if you wanted to run your AC has a heat pump for heat in the winter.
9:30 Me a plumber being humbled by Linus realising the little things that make my job cool. He has the life bro
6:31 That sounds like a problem that fixes itself.
i don't know if someone different from usual edited this, but it's done very well. sometimes i have a hard time watching through a whole video but this one went by real fast and some of the edits added to the video
You could use a bathroom fan to exhaust the hot air
Alex is the king of knowing a ton about technical stuff but having 0 fear of coming up with the most jank duct-taped together solution for any problem that should usually require expensive specialized equipment.
whoever did the hvacr load calculations for this house and designed the system should of used a heat recovery chiller you could then use a water source fain coil unit to cool this room.
With the 3D printer on the bench, I feel the need to point out that you can 3D print hose barbs that are very pressure tolerant - which is what I did at home. You know, like 0.30 $ worth of plastic instead of 300$ worth of fittings.
Box fan in the doorway. 🤣 I was wondering when someone was going to ask if it could work to heat the rest of the house.
You guys are literally mad geniuses.
universal radiator fans. normally water resistant. normally cheap. Normally powerful enough and simple. Manual transmission radiators or just plumb the automatic trans cooler inline with the rest. gmt800/900 have a good radiator design. love the jank videos. that could serve an outside solution for the time being and give it cover. the universal radiator fans are normally very splash resistant. Run them slow outside and boom. maximum jank.
:)