diy passive radiators!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

about a month ago, i salvaged about 50 feet of 3/8 inch soft copper in my local junkyard. are they any WC uses i could put this to?

i was thinking about a 10-15 ft long passive radiator with one fold.

(mycomp is the attic where its freezing)

You could always bury the line and go geothermal. Depth would vary depending on where you are located.

3/8" isn't the best for that but it's a very quiet option ...

legendaryfrog said:

about a month ago, i salvaged about 50 feet of 3/8 inch soft copper in my local junkyard. are they any WC uses i could put this to?

i was thinking about a 10-15 ft long passive radiator with one fold.

(mycomp is the attic where its freezing)

Click to expand...

10-15 feet isn't going to cool much at all as there just isn't that much surface area.

You would need to go geothermal with the 50' in order for that to be effective.

This thread might be of interest:
http://www.ocforums.com/showthread.php?t=441327

well, the difference between our systems is that his copper is normal, mines soft, meaning its half as thick. as a note, Today in math class i suggested this to my teacher and instead of normal classwork, i had to solve this for a grade. As it turns out, i would need at least 25.2 feet of it to reach my attics ambient temp of 62 degrees. Im pretty sure i could improve this further with some aluminum fins

You'd need a couple (or a few) pumps to keep the flow nice and high, and that need would allow you to section the piping so it's not so much long as it is 'boxy'; you might be able to run the piping around your case, which would at least look cool if nothing else...

legendaryfrog said:

well, the difference between our systems is that his copper is normal, mines soft, meaning its half as thick. as a note, Today in math class i suggested this to my teacher and instead of normal classwork, i had to solve this for a grade. As it turns out, i would need at least 25.2 feet of it to reach my attics ambient temp of 62 degrees. Im pretty sure i could improve this further with some aluminum fins

Click to expand...

Fist of if you could explain your process a little further you mention cable being in the wall... do you mean yo uactually have your tower up there and are remoting with display and KM? If so, COOL! that is what I was sorta doing with my last build.. (had PC running open and ran KM, speakers, monitor and IDE cable through the crack in the door to have DVDRW at my fingertips (also ran the front panel audio through so I had 2 usb ports and headest capability ))

But

Attic cooling would be fine, except during the summer. That place will hit 120F easy. Plastics melt in attics so its not a year round solution. In which case you are going to need to add knuckles, so that you can switch it off and remove the connector to add it to an active cooling loop during the warm months.

Actually the ability to switch loops is something I have been playing with lately though dont have the money to expound upon it.


Also passive radiators are not a new idea so google it. I have seen 6 ft passive rads (look like a heating board element) just one pass with fins. and passive towers are only 18-36" tall/long .

Post pics when you are done


EDIT: actually this bring up another Idea that I had that any household only needs one PC. I looked into it before, and only with linux was it available, but one PC running 6 users. Except all the users had was a keyboard, mouse and display. Everything else was handled by the actual computer. It was done on linux, but would be really neat to port it too windows. Running a quadcore CPU with enough memory and you could have 4 people game from one PC each having their own seperate game running! (and you thought there was no benefit to those proposed boards with 4 pic-e slots )

legendaryfrog said:

well, the difference between our systems is that his copper is normal, mines soft, meaning its half as thick. as a note, Today in math class i suggested this to my teacher and instead of normal classwork, i had to solve this for a grade. As it turns out, i would need at least 25.2 feet of it to reach my attics ambient temp of 62 degrees. Im pretty sure i could improve this further with some aluminum fins

Click to expand...

First off you are never going to reach your attics temperature because it is well physically impossible. May I ask how you solved this problem? Also I agree with everyone else here who suggested to bury it in the ground because that temperature will be more constant and generally nice and cool. Be sure to put it below the line of frost in the ground (or whatever that depth is called ie the depth below which the ground doesn't freeze in the winder)

It's called the "frost line" around here and is usually set by building codes. But I'm not sure that would matter too much (depending on the soil) as long as a sufficient amount of anti-freeze is used (you'd need some anyway if the lines run outside at all) and precautions are taken in the computer against condensation. However, if the soil holds enough water an effect called "heaving", where the ground actually rises due to the moisture in the soil freezing, could break the line unless there is plenty of slack (like a loop) in the ground to house connection ...