I made my own media closet that ventilates into the attic from a simple hole cut in the ceiling with a wire mesh cover. I was hoping that passive cooling would do the trick, but since winter has come along I find that the furnace heating system is not allowing the hot air to rise. So, to that end, I am looking into mounting some 12V PC fans in the hole and have a temperature switch activate them when it gets above a certain temperature. I have found several sites showing how to build one of these switches, but I was hoping that someone could point me into the direction of a cheap already packaged solution for this.

I built my own SageTV media system, so 12V power is not the issue, I just need something to take that power and switch the fans on at a certain temp.

Just yesterday I installed a quiet (0.8 sones) bathroom fan in my equipment closet that is controlled by an attic fan thermostat. I haven't tested it out yet, but that's another possible solution to the problem. I really have no idea how much cooling my closet will need, so I'm hoping the 80 CFM's the fan has will be enough. I am wondering if PC fans will be enough?

Guy

I use these... and boy they move air :)

http://www.farreys.com/ventilation/exhaust_vent_fans/nutone_in_line_fans.html

Thanks for the advice, I found an attic thermostat from home depot that should do the trick and since the media section of the closet is only about 6 - 10 cubic feet, I think a cheap bathroom exhaust fan (50 CFM) will do the trick just fine. Thanks for the help!

Thanks for the advice, I found an attic thermostat from home depot that should do the trick and since the media section of the closet is only about 6 - 10 cubic feet, I think a cheap bathroom exhaust fan (50 CFM) will do the trick just fine. Thanks for the help!

My Home Depot had a display where you could push a button and listen to how noisy each of the bathroom fans were. Hopefully yours has the same. The ones rated with a large number of sones were very noisy. I got the quietest one I could find there which was 0.8 sones, and it is almost silent.

Guy

I bought mine online, a Nutone 0.3 sone. Panasonic makes a "whisper" fan that you might consider. You're going to pay more (~100.00) for a quieter fan, but the last think you want is noise like that interrupting your movie.

http://www.dimmers.net/ventfans/whisper_ceiling.asp

Bud

I have a little bit of the same concern of removing heat from a closet. I am installling my AV(TV) equipment in a spare room with a closet. The built in will enclose the closet opening from the threater viewing area. I was investigating running small ducts from my HVAC system to keep the equipment cool. I like the idea of a bathroom fan. If I vent to the attic, won't this suck out a % of cool air from the HT room. Should cooling this closet even be a concern?

Yes, cooling should be a concern in any enclosed space with equipment that generates heat. The other thing you need to consider is how the cooling works in summer vs winter. In the summer, you could direct A/C to that location (along with using a fan to the attic, though it would definitely need a temperature sensor so the attic heat doesn't attack the closet). In the winter, you'd need to damper the duct so heat doesn't add to it, and rely on the attic fan (or even reverse it if the air is cool enough). Depends what your weather is like where you live..

I have a similar concern with cooling a 3'x3' closet where i will be locating a large amount of heat generating A/V equipment. I will use a louvered door to aid with air circulation but would like to do more to get hot air out of the closet. Construction has just began on the house so the possible solutions are open.

The options I am considering are:

1) install a bathroom-style vent fan in the ceiling and using some type of temperature sensor to trigger its operation. A similar alternative would be to use an in-line fan as the previous post mentioned.

2) tapping into the HVAC return air plenum using a small (6" or so) ducting so air would be pulled out of the closet. this would only pull air when the HVAC system was on.

3) Installing a regular a/c vent in the closet. this would only push in cooler air into the space but would not pull the hot air out and wouldn't be as effective during the winter when the heater would be pushing warmer air in.

Which of these options is the better way to go?

You could try a combination of 2 and 3:

- Run a return to the HVAC system.. this would be active year long
- Run a supply from the HVAC with a damper that you open in the summer and close during the winter. Or even better, a large "Y" duct, with a damper that switches between the two, where one side of the Y is the HVAC supply, and the other is either open air or even connected to the outside (cold air).

I am also building a media closet and need to decide whether to install an active cooling system. The closet will contain only a few pieces of heat-generating: receiver, cable box/dvr, an RF receiver, and maybe a PC. The closet is 73 ft3 and will be enclosed with two solid 24-inch bifold doors (48" front opening). For aesthetic reasons, I'd rather not use louvered doors. The closet is not near any HVAC ducts and I have no access to the outdoors or an attic because I'm in a condominum. Will infiltration and natural convection be sufficient to cool this closet? If I need an active cooling system, my only option seems to be a quiet fan on the rear wall which would exhaust to another bedroom. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Is there an opening anywhere else except the doors (since you want to keep them closed)?

As an example, you could open a hole in the wall and put a fan between rooms, moving air from the closet to the other room. The bottom line is it's preferable to move the air out of the closet space.

There are no other openings except around the doors and, you're right, they'll typically be closed. Maybe I could install something like the Panasonic WhisperWall fan. At 70 CFM it would turn the air over every minute.

That would be plenty for the # of components you have. My question is where you would put it... (Where will it vent to?)

I have no choice but to vent to the bedroom on the other side of the wall, right? How many btu/hr would a typical receiver produce? I looked at the manual for my receiver but didn't see anything in the specs?

I just did #2 (from tratliff's post above) and it's worked perfectly. My AV closet backs up to an unfinished part of my basement and is within about 5 feet of one of my main air return plenums. I tapped into this with a 4in piece of dryer vent. I used to leave the door open when using my HT but now have no heat issues from my equipment. I should note that I leave my HVAC blower/fan on full time to keep the air moving.

Good question.. I've never seen that spec published for any component. Just make a best effort to remove heat from the components and you'll be fine. Typically the threshold is the amount of noise you can handle. 70CFM is plenty, especially if it's near your components.

My Home Depot had a display where you could push a button and listen to how noisy each of the bathroom fans were. Hopefully yours has the same. The ones rated with a large number of sones were very noisy. I got the quietest one I could find there which was 0.8 sones, and it is almost silent.

Guy

I think the problem w/that setting is that in the store, you have no idea of how much AMBIENT noise there is.

Ya get home and find out that it's a lot more noisey than it sounded in the Home Depot store!

I just did #2 (from tratliff's post above) and it's worked perfectly. My AV closet backs up to an unfinished part of my basement and is within about 5 feet of one of my main air return plenums. I tapped into this with a 4in piece of dryer vent. I used to leave the door open when using my HT but now have no heat issues from my equipment. I should note that I leave my HVAC blower/fan on full time to keep the air moving.


thanks, uabcar. I will definitly add a return air duct in the equipment closet. The HVAC guy hasn't finished the duct work yet so he shouldn't mind the minor change.

In addition, i may also still add a bathroom vent with thermostat in case the return air solution is not sufficient by itself. The HVAC system won't be running all the time and this will be cheap insurance. I will have a lot of heat generating equipment and most will be high $ stuff.

Lastly, I also plan on using some point-source cooling such as those from Middle Atlantic ( http://www.middleatlantic.com/rackac/cooling/qcool.htm ) or ATM ( http://www.activethermal.com/default.htm )

I won't be done with the house for a few months but I will try to post some results with pics when it is complete.

Here is a link to a good article on cooling i found in another thread:
http://svconline.com/mag/avinstall_hot_stuff/

you need 2 things. a vent from the bottom. this can be as simple as a return plate that will let air come in and a fan in the celiing like a bathroom fan. whats on the other side of the closet?

if say a bedroom is on the other side you could cut the sheetrock and block it in the size of a standard return plate. this will let air in to the closet. then the fan to suck air up and out. but id also do exactly like the bathroom fan and vent it not to just the celing but to outside. you can tee them and use one vent.

thanks. i will be doing a version of what you suggested.

for the air intake (into the closet) i will be using a louvered door.

the HVAC guy has put in the return air vent. he agreed with the idea.
the electrician will be putting in a bathroom fan this week.
the builder still thinks i am nuts.

I am also in the process of moving everything to a closet in the basement and after thinking about it alot, i figured that I would definitly need some kind of cooling system and/or heat evacuation in there (xbox 360 anyone?). The closet is around 4x7sq/f and it is in the corner of my basement. Since we just recently changed our bathroom fan (not enough flow), I thought maybe I could use the old fan for the closet but my girlfriend said it was old and dirty and she got rid of it..on the other hand, it was very loud and I wouldnt want all this noise there anyway.

But something I noticed in that closet (before deciding to move everything) is that there is insulation at the top of the wall to the outside and I could see that there was a bit of humidity on the plastic (that wasn't sealed properly) and you could feel a little bit of cool air coming in. Now what i was thinking is, maybe I could just open it up completely by removing the insulation there and put a fan with ducting going down and put another fan on the top to evacuate the warm air.

I know that humidity might not be the best thing for electronics but since basements are usually more humid anyway, would this be a problem (depending how much more humid it becomes) or would this be a good solution to keeping the room cooler or at least at a "normal" temp

Berin,

If your equipment is on all the time, I would think the heat generated by it will be enough to "dry" any humidity.

In the new home I'm building I'm putting all A/V, computer equipment, and structured wiring in a closet that's @ 15sf. It's in SW Florida, so instead of factoring this cooling need into my main HVAC system, we've decided on a 1-ton mini split system inside the closet. This will be far more economical to run rather than keeping the large system going just for this closet.

I've had a dedicated wiring closet for a while that wasn't vented because it didn't really need to be. But, I just finished building a media server that I want to put in there. 12 hard drives and a 700w power supply throw off a lot of heat so I'm going to vent it.

In the rest of my house I have panasonic fans and I love them, but for this closet I opted for a nutone because they had a model at Home Depot that is heavy duty and designed for continuous use. It isn't terribly loud, but sound doesn't really matter to me because it's in a closet. I might hook up a thermostat or I might just run it 24/7 since that is what it was designed for.

Here is a link to the fan in case anyone is interested. It was about $80.
http://www.nutone.com/product-detail.asp?ProductID=11206

I've had a dedicated wiring closet for a while that wasn't vented because it didn't really need to be. But, I just finished building a media server that I want to put in there. 12 hard drives and a 700w power supply throw off a lot of heat so I'm going to vent it.

In the rest of my house I have panasonic fans and I love them, but for this closet I opted for a nutone because they had a model at Home Depot that is heavy duty and designed for continuous use. It isn't terribly loud, but sound doesn't really matter to me because it's in a closet. I might hook up a thermostat or I might just run it 24/7 since that is what it was designed for.

Here is a link to the fan in case anyone is interested. It was about $80.
http://www.nutone.com/product-detail.asp?ProductID=11206

I'd love to see how this works out for you? Photos even? I'm in the same boat at the moment and looking for a good solution.

Our bonus room is the theater room. It has a closet with a regular door. The room is on the second floor. I have the following equipment in there: Denon 3803 receiver, 2 Rotel RB-1080 power amps, Xbox360 elite, Denon 3800BDCI dvd player, Comcast cable box.

the rack:

http://img389.imageshack.us/img389/3226/dsc01571tv6.th.jpg (http://img389.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dsc01571tv6.jpg)http://img389.imageshack.us/images/thpix.gif (http://g.imageshack.us/thpix.php)

I dont know if you can tell from that image, but the closet is fairly big.

After about 2 hours, there's considerable heat build up in there, but it dissipates quickly if i just leave the door open for a while. It would be cool to add some type of active cooling, but I dont have much idea of what type of fan I need, etc. I wired everything in the closet myself, so I'm familiar with the electrical stuff required, I just need to know what kind of cooling I should get.

-I'd ideally like something quiet that I can run while watching movies and not have it distract us.

-I'd dont want to deal with A/C returns/vents stuff like that, just fan cooling, frankly because I wouldn't know how to. Is it possible to meet my needs without having to run an A/C conduit or return into that closet and maintain a homeostatic temperature for my stuff?


What would you all suggest I do?

Try some vents in the walls with fans; but don't vent into the attic, garage, etc. (you will hurt your A/C system as they worked best on a "sealed" system).;)

I made two vents (one high and one low) and pull cool air in from below and out at the top. Works really well...

Some pics are on a another thread. (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=16291102#post16291102)


Cheers,
Matt

this is a second floor closet, i cant pull in air from the floor, at least i dont know how...

This might be a bit on the expensive side, but I use the "Cool Cube" by Active Thermal Management to draw the heat out of my AV cabinet up into the attic. The cool cube is four low-flow fans in sequence, and a thermal switch with two speeds. The fan sits up in the attic connected by a duct to the AV cabinet to keep the noise low.

ATM has a variety of cooling solutions.

http://www.activethermal.com/Cool-Cube.htm

I have a closet with my bluray player, fios receiver, directv receiver, onkyo 660, i need to figure out a way to vent out, i like the cool cube idea but since it states email me to buy it i guess its very expensive. I like these fans

http://www.hometheatercooling.com/purchase.html

Anyone have any thoughts? I really would hate to put a vent in this, i believe the closet is over a crawl space, i dont want a bathroom fan as they are loud unless you get very expensive, let me know, thanks in advance

Does the cool cube's design that includes temperature controlled on/off switching make it "ok" to vent directly into an attic?

Yes ... there's a thermal switch that turns the unit on/off, depending on the temp. It even has low/high setting depending on the temperature (high @ 102)