Media Closet

As the electrical work wraps up this week, the details of our media closet come into focus. There are a significant number of electronics that will back our living experience, and we want to make sure we've designed the right space for the components and the connections between them, for our expected and future needs. Dedicating space for them in a closet on the main level means they're accessible but hidden away, so their appearance and noise does not disrupt the feel of our home.

The media closet has a 27" x 16" footprint. The upper portion of the closet will hold shelves upon which we can store DVDs, spare cables, and other related equipment. At counter height (36") will be a clean desktop surface with access to outlets, upon which we can place phones, iPods, or any other device that needs charging, convenient but out of sight. The bottom portion will be a set of ventilated wire shelves devoted solely to housing electronics.

Of course, all of these electronics will require cooling. Electronics radiate 99% of their consumed power as heat, so computing the expected heat generation is fairly easy. With everything running we will be using about 150W of power, or roughly 500 BTU. For future-proofing (say down the road we install a real desktop machine as a server, at another 150W) we want a cooling capacity to support double that.

The space to be cooled is only what's underneath the counter, which is only about 15 cubic feet. We're going to start with passive cooling - just a vent into the kitchen - to keep noise and energy consumption low. But we're putting in wiring for a fan in case things are hotter than we expect and we need to add one later. A good ventilation rule of thumb is to turn over the entire volume of air in the room at least every minute, which means we'll want a fan that does 20cfm or so.