using geothermal power plants for heating

[sooshon]

Any tips on effectively using geothermal plants for heating in a way that is safe so that pawns won't overheat but maintains rooms at comfortable temperature and that doesn't require any or small amounts of input during the changing seasons as temperatures fluctuate?

[The Blind One]

build a box around your geothermal and roof it so the heat stays inside that room, build your base around it and connect the rooms with a vent to the geothermal room. Now you can shut off the vents whenever it is summer time and you don't need the free heating. This is how I did it in my latest base. Works like a charm as an extra free heating source.

I have the geothermal feed into my main dining / rec room which has all the other bedrooms attached to it with more vents. It won't cover your entire base but it will provide some extra heating at no cost and the geothermal room is usually hot enough that your pawns can hide in that room should a severe cold snap happen.

[--<[ Blei ]>--]

quite easy.
build it inside of a room, but extend the room with another room which has a door.
in summertime just keep the door open to increase the room size and reduce the overall themperature.
BUT i only recommend this in really damn cold areas like the northpole where i did use this several times with success already.
In any other region, it's not really worth it or you have to place coolers to make sure your people wont get grilled alive in summertime.

[Astasia]

It can work well as a supplement, but you will generally need actual heaters for fine control to keep bedrooms out of the slept in cold/heat range. Use the geothermal as a free bump of a few degrees in the winter allowing you to use fewer heaters to reach the comfortable temperature range for your colonists.

Keep in mind they don't actually produce that much heat, one geyser/geothermal is significantly less heat output than 2 heaters. If you have a very small starter base it can do a lot of the heating work, but if you have a larger base it's just going to be a small amount of the heating.

[sooshon]

Thanks, I guess I had this weird misconception that they produce huge, unmanageable amounts of heat, probably from surrounding them with walls for protection in the past and then a pawn overheating in the room with no space while trying to fix it with a component, but I've learned since to simply remove the roof in the area to prevent that from happening. Just thought it'd be nice to actually put the heat to use, since using every scrap feels very Rimworld : )
What I ended up doing based on your guys' advice is just roofing over my plant and leading a vent to my workshop, which already shared a wall, it's quite a huge space and has open doors to other places, so it will just help with heating in the winter. I just added a vent to a small 1x3 room with no roof on the other side of the geothermal vent, in case there is a heatwave or half my base is on fire (surprisingly common...) or something and it really becomes an issue i could simply throw that vent open and make sure it's not contributing any heating without having to do anything else (can just close the vent to the workshop also but I'd rather not have a superheated plant room in case it needs component replacing). Seems to work like charm, I don't think it's too much excess heat that it will require micromanaging by hand in the summers.

[martindirt]

Originally posted by sooshon:

Thanks, I guess I had this weird misconception that they produce huge, unmanageable amounts of heat, probably from surrounding them with walls for protection in the past and then a pawn overheating in the room with no space while trying to fix it with a component, but I've learned since to simply remove the roof in the area to prevent that from happening. Just thought it'd be nice to actually put the heat to use, since using every scrap feels very Rimworld : )
What I ended up doing based on your guys' advice is just roofing over my plant and leading a vent to my workshop, which already shared a wall, it's quite a huge space and has open doors to other places, so it will just help with heating in the winter. I just added a vent to a small 1x3 room with no roof on the other side of the geothermal vent, in case there is a heatwave or half my base is on fire (surprisingly common...) or something and it really becomes an issue i could simply throw that vent open and make sure it's not contributing any heating without having to do anything else (can just close the vent to the workshop also but I'd rather not have a superheated plant room in case it needs component replacing). Seems to work like charm, I don't think it's too much excess heat that it will require micromanaging by hand in the summers.

I'm burned down my very first geothermal reactor. Tightly walled around, with a granite door as entrance. Few moments later it was on fire, and my pawns were unable to kill the fire. 😂

[sooshon]

Originally posted by martindirt:

Originally posted by sooshon:

Thanks, I guess I had this weird misconception that they produce huge, unmanageable amounts of heat, probably from surrounding them with walls for protection in the past and then a pawn overheating in the room with no space while trying to fix it with a component, but I've learned since to simply remove the roof in the area to prevent that from happening. Just thought it'd be nice to actually put the heat to use, since using every scrap feels very Rimworld : )
What I ended up doing based on your guys' advice is just roofing over my plant and leading a vent to my workshop, which already shared a wall, it's quite a huge space and has open doors to other places, so it will just help with heating in the winter. I just added a vent to a small 1x3 room with no roof on the other side of the geothermal vent, in case there is a heatwave or half my base is on fire (surprisingly common...) or something and it really becomes an issue i could simply throw that vent open and make sure it's not contributing any heating without having to do anything else (can just close the vent to the workshop also but I'd rather not have a superheated plant room in case it needs component replacing). Seems to work like charm, I don't think it's too much excess heat that it will require micromanaging by hand in the summers.

I'm burned down my very first geothermal reactor. Tightly walled around, with a granite door as entrance. Few moments later it was on fire, and my pawns were unable to kill the fire. 😂

Yep, learning experience, it can superheat the air if the room around it has no space \ just a few cells. just use the architect \ remove roof zone over the room of the geothermal plant if you're going to just have a wall around it for protecting it, the roof serves no purpose here : )

[The Blind One]

Man's starting to talk like he knows the rim already

Keep it up son