Question about blocking one side of a cooler

[Gold♥Shield]

Is it going to have a detrimental effect if I place a cooler for my freezer then wall off the heat-side of the cooler? Trying to plan my base early on and if I go for double-walls in my freezer, I'd like to know if I can wall off one side of the coolers because that will affect where I place them.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Gold♥Shield:

Is it going to have a detrimental effect if I place a cooler for my freezer then wall off the heat-side of the cooler?

Yes, because the heat needs to be vented out. If you enclose the heat exhaust within the room, then you are trapping that heat and you will defeat the purpose of cooling the room.
If you do vent the heat from cooler room but wish to enclose the heat exhaust outside of the cooler, then be aware that trapping that heat will make it extremely hot and the proximity of a mini inferno to your cooler will be problematic.
So, rather than attempting to block the heat exhaust, consider allowing plenty of space for the heat to disperse to.

[TwoTonGamer]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2217109973
You can vent the hot side into an unroofed room if you are not deep underground. Even 1 tile wide.
Excuse the mess in the screeshot, but, the cooler is frozen at 30f and the workrooms adjacent are cooled to 70f.

[HunterSilver]

Coolers have a limit to how much heat they can dissipate into a room. At a certain temperature they just flat out cannot pump anymore hot air from one room to another. Once you reach this critical temperature, your cooler's ability to cool becomes equal to the ventilation room's loss of heat through insulation. Heat loss/gain through insulation is substantially weaker than a cooler's ability to pump out heat, so you'll see a rapid rise in temperature for your rooms.

Walling off the ventilation end is fine as long as you leave some way for the heat to escape, such as a vent or an open roof. This allows the room temperature to work towards becoming ambient with the open air. Your coolers can actually pump out heat faster than a few tiles can dissipate it though, so the more heat you're removing, the more vents you'll need to successfully dissipate all of that heat.

[Gold♥Shield]

Thanks for the information. I ended up just placing them in a way that looks decent and I'm venting into the open atmosphere/walkway. Since I chose an area with a permanent summer (wasn't aware that was a thing), I don't really have to worry about my pawns complaining about the heat.

Another quick question about temperatures. My pawns keep complaining about sleeping in the cold (roughly 65F at night) since I built all their rooms in the side of a mountain. That being said, would it be possible to use vents between rooms and maybe pipe in hot air from a nearby geothermal generator or even just use a single heater for two adjacent rooms? I was afraid I'd be dealing with perpetual heat-related issues being in the desert during a never-ending summer, but it seems my pawns are always cold at night, even in the summer months.

[TwoTonGamer]

Use of vents will, indeed, share the heater's warmth between rooms. The vents act to normalize the temperature between the rooms they connect. Works for a/c, too.

[HunterSilver]

That's odd, they should only get that debuff if you dip below 60f at any point during the night. Yeah, venting geothermal heat between rooms and using coolers to normalize it can be a way to stabilize temperatures. I usually use heaters for consistency but that has the issue of them breaking down and using components for repairs and also consuming extra power.

[UltimateTobi]

One enclosed, un-roofed, tile suffices to let the heat out.

[Gold♥Shield]

I'm just wondering if the geothermal generator will be enough to keep the rooms heated. I can always try, but vents cost steel and I don't want to start hacking apart my rooms only to find out that the heat doesn't stretch across all the rooms.

[grapplehoeker]

Originally posted by Gold♥Shield:

I'm just wondering if the geothermal generator will be enough to keep the rooms heated. I can always try, but vents cost steel and I don't want to start hacking apart my rooms only to find out that the heat doesn't stretch across all the rooms.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2067041052
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2067041707

[Edmund Greyfox]

I generally build bedrooms in blocks, with one vent between each. I put a heater in the first and then every other room, an the room in the middle stays about a degree or two cooler than the rooms with the heaters. This is with 5x5 or 5x6 bedrooms