Cold room design

[MayoCulpa]

So I've tried a mountain map and wow, a cold room makes a huge difference.

I've started using the advice I've seen in other threads about putting a pallet of water jugs in there, to extend the room's time at low temperature. And I know to keep the mountain roof on for my cold room and removing it for living / working areas. I also noticed that there is a slight change in temperature when the door opens and shuts, so I've created an "airlock" system to minimize that leakage.

But I am wondering if there are other factors that influence temperature, such as:
- player built walls vs natural mountain walls
- size of room
- thickness of exterior wall (ie one tile vs two tile walls separating the cold room from heated spaces)

Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

[Philtre]

Originally posted by MayoCulpa:

- player built walls vs natural mountain walls
- size of room
- thickness of exterior wall (ie one tile vs two tile walls separating the cold room from heated spaces)

Wall type/thickness: no effect. I also don't think it's worth having an airlock; I've never needed one.

Room size: this matters. Each pallet of 6 (completely full) ice jugs will keep about 9 tiles worth of room below freezing year-round, so count up the size of your room, divide by 9, round up, and build that many pallets in there. Fill them all up with water jugs before the end of winter so they freeze solid before the temperatures start to rise, and you will be good.

[MayoCulpa]

Oo thank you, this is exactly the info I was looking for!

And it works the other way around too. My other water pallets that I want to melt for use should be kept in a very large room, preferably with multiple heat sources, to balance out their chilling effect.

Oh and y'know what, I can increase the priority on my cold room jug pallets so my clanfolk never remove the jars from there. They should just always stay full.

[Philtre]

Originally posted by MayoCulpa:

Oh and y'know what, I can increase the priority on my cold room jug pallets so my clanfolk never remove the jars from there. They should just always stay full.

You can also get the pallets filled, then just stop the whole pallet (using the "circle with an X though it" icon in the pallet infobox). That will completely prevent them from taking anything out, but it puts an unattractive red X on the pallet. (If you really dislike that red X, a slightly more complicated approach is to have a small room dedicated to ice jug pallets next to your pantry, connect them by vents, then wall up the doors to the ice room so no-one can go in there. )

Also note that you can melt ice jugs on any fire/fireplace/kitchen, at the cost of some twigs. Much faster than waiting for them to melt, and you don't have to worry about making the room cold.

[MayoCulpa]

I'm gonna try stopping the pallet, yeah! I don't think the X will bug me - it'll just visually set apart those pallets as cold room pallets and not to be messed with.

I hadn't been sure how the "Stop" command actually worked for a storage item. Like whether it meant "don't touch anything in this storage item, leave it exactly as is" versus "remove everything from this storage item and don't use it for storage." For the latter, to remove everything from a storage item, I'm guessing the best method is to raise the priority on other storage items of the same type. Kinda like how my indoor peat stack near the peat stove is a higher priority than the backup peat stack at the far end of the workshop.

[miauukisu]

Note about wall effects: none at the moment - but don't trust that to be true when game is finished ;) Insulation value updates have been mentioned several times (with "later"/"eventually" type comments).
And with pallets that you don't want to end up frozen: next to a fireplace (or other heat source) is a pretty good place for them, then the room won't need to be as large either.

[MayoCulpa]

Originally posted by miauukisu:

Note about wall effects: none at the moment - but don't trust that to be true when game is finished ;) Insulation value updates have been mentioned several times (with "later"/"eventually" type comments).
And with pallets that you don't want to end up frozen: next to a fireplace (or other heat source) is a pretty good place for them, then the room won't need to be as large either.

This is good to know! And yeah it makes sense that later on, closer to release, they'll add stuff like brick walls providing better insulation than, say, straw.

Here's the setup in my current save. I'll add a second jug pallet in the inner cold room, then stop it as well once it's full up. The main jugs for usage in the living area are right next to the stove. I thought putting the workshop ones near the bloomery would be a good idea, but in midwinter it just doesn't get them hot enough. Maybe I need to give the workshop its own stove just for heating purposes.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3031434853

[Philtre]

Originally posted by MayoCulpa:

Here's the setup in my current save. I'll add a second jug pallet in the inner cold room, then stop it as well once it's full up.

Nice. Note that rushlights add a small amount of heat, so you may need some extra ice if you want to have lights in the cold room.

[dissent]

With the new foods, I'm finding that I need a lot of cold room space. So with my usual proclivity for moderation and not taking things to extremes, I did this cold room setup in a recent play-through:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197989981934/screenshot/2010349332622530328/

One four-pallet cold room filled up, an adjoining six-pallet cold room starting to fill up, and two more six-pallet cold rooms below them. That might give me enough storage. We'll see. :p

Fun fact: you can squeeze a bit more storage out of Meat Racks/Serving Baskets than you can out of Pantry Shelves. If you look at the bottom right cold room, I can fit 6x Pantry Shelves in the bottom row. But in the row above, I can fit 13x Meat Racks as one will fit in the middle aisle at the end of the row. So I'm getting an extra six storage slots. The further bonus is that I can put Rat Traps in the middle aisle of the Meat Rack row. You can't put anything in the middle aisle of the Pantry Shelves row as the space is taken up by the access points for the Pantries. The flip-side is that Pantries are more versatile because they store everything, Meat Racks only store meat products and Serving Baskets only store non-meat products. Although Pantries are also more expensive, needing Nails and Planks to the Branches & Straw of Meat Racks/Serving Baskets.

[dissent]

OK, forget the 'fun fact' about Meat Racks/Serving Baskets giving a bit more storage than Pantry Shelves. They give 50% more storage. I didn't realise it but you can fill a cold room entirely with Meat Racks or Serving Baskets (not a single tile of unused floor space) and it doesn't hinder the workers' movement. They will walk over/around/through a solid block of Meat Racks to reach the one at the back of the room.

You can't do that with Pantry Shelves. They take up 2x1 tiles but there is also an 'access point' tile and you cannot place anything on that or the Pantry Shelf won't work. So Pantry Shelves take up 2x1+1 tiles (3 tiles) to offer 12 storage slots. You can put three Meat Racks or Serving Baskets in the same 3-tile area, which offer 18 storage slots. So a 50% increase.

[MayoCulpa]

That is awesome! That could keep a large clan going for quite awhile.

And I see what you mean about racks + serving tables vs shelves. If I'm going minimalist and want to specialize my food storage, maybe I can restrict food and veggie things to the more compact storage items and only use shelves for the stuff that doesn't fit either, like soups and dough.

[dissent]

One thing I've been looking at is repurposing my initial mountain living quarters into cold room space. Like many others, I build initially in a mountain as it's the easiest and quickest way to get everybody indoors in Private Rooms. I then move into a built settlement in year 2. Until now, I'd strip out the doors, windows, vents from the mountain quarters and leave them as an empty shell. Which seems a waste considering it took quite a lot of work to make them.

So now I convert them to use the space. This is in my current settlement:

https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197989981934/screenshot/2010349443479215961/

The gathering room is top right, which I have kept as a 'pregnancy room' as it contains the only Double Bed in the settlement. In the middle is my original four-pallet cold room which I made in the first Fall to get me through Winter. It looks a mess but workers can get to every storage container in the room. The only reason there are four open tiles is because those are filled by the access points for the four Pantry Shelves. Next time I'll dispense with Pantries and fill the entire floor space with Meat Racks/Serving Baskets.

The bottom row was my 2x3 tile bedrooms for the original six clan members. I dug out another tile in each room to accommodate the jug pallet and have converted them into cold rooms. Each room will take six Meat Racks/Serving Baskets. I have already installed them in the room on the right, and workers again have no problems reaching any of the containers in the room.

Fitting six Meat Racks/Serving Baskets (the equivalent of three Pantries) in a 2x3 area is quite efficient. If I can get an extra 50% capacity in my cold rooms, why not take it?

[Tinker.er]

You can use other materials for cold room walls and roofs as long as you watch your temps and have enough ice jugs.
I like to build a starter cold room in a mountain then move it later on depending on my design.
But once I move to a permanent design I always use brick for the walls, and tile for the floor and roof. You can even build it as a free standing structure if you want (although this might change).
Something to consider for expansion, your ice jug room doesn't really need to be accessible just plan ahead for expansion, so you can wall it completely closed and add vents.
Later on you can even add vents from the outside to other walls of the cold room to cool additional areas when you need to get more storage.