Water cooling using condo building central cooling loop

[danbrotherston]

Many multi-residential buildings (like mine) have a central cooling plant to cool the building, where water or glycol is cooled in the central plan and pumped through risers through the building to provide a cooling source for air handlers in each unit. Leaving aside the fact that in most buildings this equipment is considered a common element and so modifying it or using it other than in an air handler would probably be prohibited by condo board regulations, (and in a rental building, almost certainly is not permitted), has anyone actually ever tested cooling a PC using this loop? Given the cooling and pumping equipment is centralized, and obviously of a very high capacity, it should, in theory, provide a very efficient, very quiet solution.

[Bitter]

46 minutes ago, danbrotherston said:

Many multi-residential buildings (like mine) have a central cooling plant to cool the building, where water or glycol is cooled in the central plan and pumped through risers through the building to provide a cooling source for air handlers in each unit. Leaving aside the fact that in most buildings this equipment is considered a common element and so modifying it or using it other than in an air handler would probably be prohibited by condo board regulations, (and in a rental building, almost certainly is not permitted), has anyone actually ever tested cooling a PC using this loop? Given the cooling and pumping equipment is centralized, and obviously of a very high capacity, it should, in theory, provide a very efficient, very quiet solution.

It absolutely should be enough to cool a PC, likely cooling parts to below ambient and causing condensation. What you COULD do is duct the cool dry air from the vent directly into the PC but then you'd only get the cooling affect when the cool air is being ran. I suppose you could figure out some way to get the cold out via an air or fluid exchanger without damaging or modifying the exchanger in your unit but that would be a lot of engineering for little benefit.

[Egad]

In additional the below ambient problem mentioned above, you'd need a pressure regulator to deal with the fact the system you're plugging into can easily be 4 or 5 bars, and most consumer water cooling stuff can only handle 1 to 2 bars.  You'd always want to control the flow since at the rates the commercial stuff flows any leak would become a catastrophe very quickly.  Especially since the max fluid dumped into your case is the  based on the amount the building system holds rather than just the finite amount in your loop.  

 

I think the failure cases make this too severe to be attractive.  

[danbrotherston]

Oh, I know hypothetically this would be entirely custom, entirely for the hell of it experiment.