Making a freezer?

[Great Mighty Poo]

I made a fairly large room, so far have installed 6 coolers, set to i think -29? The vent areas for them are at 130 degrees, but the actual freezer area is only at about 5 degrees cooler than the rest of my base. The room is pretty large (9 by 20), but the 6 coolers are ALWAYS on, from a geothermal power source. Am I just doing this wrong?

[Theutus]

Screenshot

[Great Mighty Poo]

Originally posted by Theutus:

Screenshot

Dont think you can post pictures on here, can you?

[MayoCulpa]

A screenshot would help. Generally speaking a nice square or rectangular freezer with double walls to retain temperature should not need 6 coolers. In temperate weather 2 coolers, one set to -10 and the other set to -20 ought to get the job done.

[Great Mighty Poo]

Originally posted by MayoCulpa:

A screenshot would help. Generally speaking a nice square or rectangular freezer with double walls to retain temperature should not need 6 coolers. In temperate weather 2 coolers, one set to -10 and the other set to -20 ought to get the job done.

Double walls, you say? I guess thats worth a try. Im in semi arid actually. I took a completely random start area.

[MayoCulpa]

Go to your steam screenshots, click on a picture to enlarge it. Highlight the url along the top of the image, paste it into your reply. The image should appear automatically, and if not, folks can use the url to go directly to your screenshot.

Here's a freezer from a tribal colony I did in a tropical swamp awhile back:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2077705113

[Great Mighty Poo]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2118025294

Hopefully that worked. Anyways Im thinking maybe the area is just too big, but with 6 youd think it would work.

[MayoCulpa]

Hmm! Part of it could be the sheer number of openings - for temperature exchange purposes a cooler is about the same as a closed vent, ie it "leaks" temperature considerably faster than a wall. You've got a good airlock to the south there, and that single-wall separation between the north part of the fridge and the rec rooms shouldn't be costing you *that* much temp.

Are the coolers' vent areas open to the sky? You're deep enough in the rock there that some of them could be overhead mountain. So if the heat's just building up and not being released anywhere, it could be leaking right back into fridge cause it has nowhere to go.

[Great Mighty Poo]

Originally posted by MayoCulpa:

Hmm! Part of it could be the sheer number of openings - for temperature exchange purposes a cooler is about the same as a closed vent, ie it "leaks" temperature considerably faster than a wall. You've got a good airlock to the south there, and that single-wall separation between the north part of the fridge and the rec rooms shouldn't be costing you *that* much temp.

Are the coolers' vent areas open to the sky? You're deep enough in the rock there that some of them could be overhead mountain. So if the heat's just building up and not being released anywhere, it could be leaking right back into fridge cause it has nowhere to go.

No ♥♥♥♥? Nah, they are just a single hole cause I didnt want any openings to my base. Maybe I could mine out a few passages to the front farm area to vent that out then.

[Theutus]

Your corners are missing blocks, you need a path for heat to escape.

[TwoTonGamer]

Originally posted by CountLong:

...so far have installed 6 coolers...The room is pretty large (9 by 20)...

That is a large room, but 6 coolers should be getting the temp below freezing. There is something simple that is venting the cold air out.

Check that it is fully roofed. When you mouseover the freezer, it should state if it is a room and fully roofed in the info on the lower right.
The freezers are pointing the right way? Blue side into the freezer and red side outside?
The red side needs to vent outdoors, or into an unroofed space. If you have vented into an enclosed room , be careful of heat stroke when you send someone in to fix it.

[Theutus]

One way in with an airlock hallway, like the one on the bottom of your freezer would be helpful also.

[TwoTonGamer]

As MayoCulpa stated. Make sure those coolers are venting to an unroofed space. If those vent rooms are enclosed it's going to be a thousand degrees in there!

[Great Mighty Poo]

Originally posted by TwoTonGamer:

As MayoCulpa stated. Make sure those coolers are venting to an unroofed space. If those vent rooms are enclosed it's going to be a thousand degrees in there!

Its only like.... 140 in there, dont be silly! /s
Yea Im digging out some ventshafts right now.
Never have made it this far so I really have no clue what Im doing.

[Great Mighty Poo]

Originally posted by TwoTonGamer:

As MayoCulpa stated. Make sure those coolers are venting to an unroofed space. If those vent rooms are enclosed it's going to be a thousand degrees in there!

Digging a ventshaft fixed it damn near instantly. Thanks guys.

[Brigador Genetta]

Originally posted by CountLong:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2118025294

Hopefully that worked. Anyways Im thinking maybe the area is just too big, but with 6 youd think it would work.

if those 1x1 nooks you have the coolers exhausting into have a roof over them, they're not actually moving the "energy" anywhere (Coolers work by "moving" heat, not creating cold, just like a real air conditioner); Those little pockets need somewhere for that heat to escape. Simply not having a roof on them is enough, they don't need an actual opening.

Rimworld 101 re: insulation, for the curious:

Thin rock roofs and constructed roofs have the same insulation value, but an overhead mountain has 16X(!) the insulating value, IIRC. This goes both ways in both heat loss (Coolers really can't push heat through that much insulation!) and cold temperature retention (If your freezer is completely mountain-roofed, once it's cold, it'll stay that way for a day or two even without power)

Infestations aren't a danger if your freezer is colder than -17 degrees C - It's safe to build a mountain roofed freezer IF kept cold

Wall material makes no difference to insulation. At all. Metal, wood and stone walls all insulate the same. YMMV with some mods that do add insulating walls. Floors and terrain also make no difference at all.

Double walls are treated as "open to outside" even if they are an inner layer of double wall. Single wall layers are not, so long as they are a constructed *or* smoothed rock wall. Unsmoothed rock walls are always an 'outside' surface. The perimeter cells of the wall are calculated based on the outdoor ambient temperature, testing shows, *not* the indoor! Don't build multiple concentric double-wall rings for extra insulation, it only increases the effective outdoor surface area, and the insulating effect does not stack room to room with doubles. The game does this to keep heat-pushing math simple.

Overall perimeter is the biggest factor in how efficiently a room cools; If an odd shaped room has say, 60 floor tiles, but a ton of wall in weird shapes, it requires a lot more cooling. Wall perimeter area matters a lot more than actual floor area!

Doors are worse than walls for insulating, even when shut. When open, they're an omnidirectional vent (not just towards their openings!). "Airlocks" with two doors at least 3 cells apart can help maintain your freezer's cool. Use autodoors made of fast opening materials like wood or steel when possible to reduce the amount of time doors are open in the airlock.

Someone mentioned earlier that coolers also act ventlike; IIRC, this is also true, coolers are about as efficient insulating as a closed door or vent, not a wall. Using more coolers than necessary to maintain temperature makes them all less efficient.

Coolers can dump their heat into any space that has less than 50% roof coverage endlessly. So long as there's a single 1x1 space behind them open to the sky, they can push heat forever. Otherwise the far side will heat up and the cooler stops working once the back side is too hot. Worse, that heat leaks back in.

Sorry about the megadump, but I hope the information helps!