whats the ambient temp of the air, and the ground temp?

cool beans none the less, thanks for sharing some data!

Who doubted this?
BTW that’s called “slab”, the bottom of the foundation. It is always “Almost everywhere across the entire planet, the upper 10 feet below ground level stays the same temperature, between 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit (10 and 16 degrees C).”
Near the bottom of:
http://www.energyquest.ca.gov/story/chapter11.html
Im not sure how deep it is in the photo but his measurements verify the link.

its actually a slab-on-grade, and may or may not function as a “mat slab” foundation. and wrt justdiy, i suppose its winter down there so its cool. the slab would be warmed by the sun, but cooled by the air and any evaporative cooling that may be happening. he’ll also have a large, heated house over top of it when its finally running. so its hard to say what annual range of temperatures he can expect to see in the slab itself. what is certain though is that it has a shit ton of heat capacity, and the energy frrom a cpu will easily by sucked up by the slab (provided theres enough residence time in the buried loop).

its a sweet idea regardless.

This would be much more effective with a proper basement

“Cool idea, but are there simpler superior options? That is the real question.”

of course, its not like any real engineering went into this

Oh I forgot one more point I’m interested

… what did his wife say ? I mean they are ongoing to build a home and he is just worring about the temperature of this PC cooling project.

… guess the amount of heat he save on his computer is nothing compared to the amount heat produced by the punishment he receive from his wife for carrying fishtank equipment to the construction site instead of bricks :D

PEX is relatively expensive. I’d run a loop of it for only the entertainment value in watching people shake their heads as I describe the method I used to cool my computer’s CPU. PEX or Cooper, given the thermal conductivity of concrete it wouldn’t take very much tubing at all. this is not like you are circulating hot water for space heating where you desire to heat the slab uniformly.

Lotta should haves in this, but it’s still going to be a couple/few years worth of awesome just like it is.

Just use it until it fails and put a better one in your next house! :D

it wasn’t THAT hard to set up and it’ll get some use so what’s really the harm here?

when the pipes start leaking you pump it out as best you can, cut them off flush with the floor and cork ‘em!

Bah a properly designed Air/water exchanger will do all he wants. Most Pc overclockers half ass it. I pull more heat out of my intake air on my turbo car than any of you PC guys can generate with your little processors.

replace water with oil, bath all the components in it, except for the power supply, and off goes the overclocking with no worries.

http://www.copper.org/applications/plumbing/techcorner/problem_embedding_copper_concrete.html

“It is completely acceptable to bury/embed both hard drawn and annealed copper water tube in concrete.”

“According to the Portland Cement Association the interaction of copper with both dry and wet concrete should not cause a corrosion concern.”

i have no experience with copper in concrete, but why did i just find a complete contradiction to what all the commenters are saying?

bum bum buuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmm

will cannily co-opted copper corrode on the pipes that peter packed previously?

Will Sam get the message the laura tied to the back of sam’s goat dave?

What does a goat have to do with this?

all these questions and more on the next hacker’s drama theater!

brought to you by altoids and tessco

Thats freaking funny….

so many high pro constructors know it better… reading all these posts remembers me of discussions between my father and his mates :D

get real….

1. Corrode yes but speed is much limited.
2. Destroying the slap… oh my god 99% of all concrete buildings are going to collapse :D

If there is a leakage in 10 years… pure some of this bares leak stuff inside which you will find in a DIY shop for your car cooling system.

If it leaks 20 years later…. well

0. Maybe human kind is doomed or we are just more amazed to make a good wooden fire and create sharp triangular stone knifes
1. Maybe PCs in the today form are gone already
2. Maybe you have to cool them with liquid nitrogen
3. Maybe gigs bought one of this “home server central heating combination” units :)
4. If he is still thinking to use the tubes…

.. he will simply put some of those little freaking nanobots inside and let them replace the damage…

he can easily get and use them since there are articles about them on hack-a-day in 2025, 2027 and 2029

and don’t forget, since it is hack-a-day to read about the arduinno based nanobots from 2019 and 2021

I give this guy some credit. Personally, when I do buy a house, I want to do a similar project with a long length of buried tubing for cooling the house in the summer. It probably won’t have the same capacity as an air conditioner, but I’m betting it would save a good amount of electricity over a traditional a/c unit.

Case in point: my dad has a barn with a thick cement floor that he’s used as a garage for many years. The ground floor is almost always a good 10 degrees cooler than the outside air in summer. In winter, the concrete modulates the temperature swings so that a negative 20 degree Fahrenheit temperature at night isn’t nearly as cold.

I thought a glycol mix such as propylene glycol would work better on a project like this.