What does everybody do for cooling . Clients have been asking us to put the rack in closets . In the clients defense some of the recent jobs like a pool house there is no other place for the rack. So we will have a 40 space rack with 3 cable boxes , receiver , camera DVr . Multi room ampm etc in a closet this stuffnis going to heat up the closet quickly. When I have tried fans that are around 100 cfm and it didn't cool the closet . I would open the door and it would be around 90 degrees. I started using 10 inch fans and it worked . I had just tried to integrate a 350 cfm fan . But gc and others want a 150 cfm ceiling fan. They said the fan I picked was to big . I know my fan will cool the closet but not sure if there fan will . But if it's not enough cooling 6 months From now won't I be the one blamed or my company eat the cost of the fried gear ?

Don't underestimate the simplicity of a bathroom exhaust fan tied to a wall-mount temp sensor... Let the other guys install it, too. :)

That plus this [Link: middleatlantic.com] will solve most of your problems. If you need more cooling it's time for a dedicated room air conditioner.

[Link: coolcomponents.com]

I am having the hvac company install the fan .we are going with 150 cfm bathroom fan. But if it doesn't work am I not at fault ? What wall mount temp sensor are u using?

+1 Works GREAT!!

Active Thermal Management and Middle Atlantic both have inline fan systems for closets. They also have a variety of fans for racks and cabinet installations. We install fans in 95% of our systems including the smaller 5.1 single room systems.

I used this on my last install with a bathroom fan. Picked up the highest CFM with the lowest noise output they had. Worked out just fine.

[Link: amazon.com]

The problem with bathroom fans is the noise. Stick with cool components or atm. Remember the principles of air flow, hot air rises, cool air needs to enter the space, don't vent outside of the house.

Middle Atlantic has white pages on air flow, some good info.

I like using Panasonic bath fan's or these Fantech fan's [Link: residential.fantech.net].

In our area anything more than 600 CFM require a makeup to bring in fresh air to replace the air being removed from the home. It causes a negative pressure when you remove more air than you bring in through the standard fresh air intake. So using a 350cfm fan can cause some negative effects and that's probably why the GC is concerned.

Also don't underestimate using an IP controlled power supplies as well. We have a job currently that is in a tight cabinet with a 12 channel amp, QSC amp, and more. I have macros that shut off the amps when the zones are not being used. The QSC never shuts off and I was having an issue with the 12 channel amp and the auto on so I had to switch it to always on. Shutting off the equipment has help a ton!

 Agree on the bathroom fans, best bang for the buck for sure when it's an easy install. We use cool components quite a bit as week and MA sometimes.

The "make-up air" comment dovetails with what I was thinking.

The thing is, you want to remove the warm air and replace it with cool air.

If you had a totally sealed closet, there's no way you could suck hot air out of it. So a fan that exhausts air to the outside depends on leakage around the door, or a vent installed in the door (near the floor as that's where the cooler air is), to let air in to replace the air taken out by the fan.

You won't need to "make up" for the air removed by the fan if you blow that air back into the room. This often takes some real simplicity or some real complication.

I've had air vents in the toe kick of a cabinet, with holes in the bottom plate to let the air in from the toe kick area, and ATM fans, which are very quiet, installed in the top of the cabinet. This, of course, was not in a closet.

Could you pull the air out of the closet and feed it back into the room? ("Make-up" air is required when you dump the air out of the house, not just out of the closet into the house somewhere else.) If so, you could move any amount of air, the only challenge then being that moving lots of air starts to give you air movement noise.


The Panasonic fan is very very quiet, so it can be used almost anywhere.

update after it was giving to the hvac company to install the fan . I get forwarded an email that said there are using an 80 cfm bathroom fan and hvac company is not responible for av equipment. this is like 22% percent the cooling i asked for. I am going along with it but I am pushing for someone the make it clear to client the we are being told this is the only option. there are two pieces in the rack that i know are sensitive to heat and there around 3k each because there fore the most part there just computers . how do we make it clear that we asked for 4 times the cooling to be safe to make sure the gear was safe and couldnt get it and should not have to pay for new gear if heat messes up the gear and get paid for install time of replacing the gear

Fantech PB190


Noise will not be an issue.



Have done this in a house with a crawl space under the house.

Equipment closet is NOT vented to the room.

Simple recirculating system where you are pulling cool air in from under the house, and dumping hot air back under the house.



If no "crawl" I would then draw cool air in from the room and dump the hot air out to a much larger interior space. Again, a simple recirculation system.


Works very well.

I don't understand why you would accept that. Reject the proposal and communicate once again what the requirements are.