ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area how to by pass??

Niko:
You said a 'small computer room'?

Is that room a 'IT' classified room? (Article 645)

I suggest that you check into that Article. As you said a 'small start-up' company, but your building dept may have issues with that 'room'.

It all depnds on what it is 'called' and by whom.

A seperate system works in an 'IT' room by Art 645, but there qre other requirements.

Use a wall mounted air conditioner -- say one-ton...

And have the condenser vent heat into some other space.

Just cut in a hole in the sheet rock and reframe it to hold the unit.

The last time I looked such units did not use a momentary switch.

A truly portable air conditioner works for people -- not machines.

You need to get the heat entirely out of the IT room.

I doubt very seriously that this would qualify as a 645 room.
Just because you put a computer in a room does not make it a "computer room". (645.4)

I doubt a mini split is going to do much for him either. They usually only have a wireless remote for the controls and the two I have come back from a power failure "off".

If I was really going to hack this, I would come up with a N/C point of a relay to provide the "on" pulse and pick the relay with a voltage generated inside the AC unit. That is how I kick started the MP3 player PCs in my cars that had ATX power supplies.
You still may want to do this in conjunction with an HVAC contractor for a little legal cover.

BTW one consideration is starting the compressor into a hydraulic lock. If you have an auto restart you should have a lock out time delay relay on the compressor so it won't short cycle if the power glitches. Those reclosers usually cycle faster than you would want to stop and start a compressor.

Liebert is a big name in data center cooling. They are not cheap, but if it's in the budget, I would probably look into one of their small data room cooling systems.

Liebert