My freezer isnt working! It is set to 6- but it is still 10 C in there! Heeeelp, my stuffz are spoiling..
Airlocks! They're just door-space-door but they're brilliant at keeping the heat/cold in. Also, the fewer the doors that a room has the less heat/cold leaks out of the room. Make sure that the place that the heat is getting vented to is unroofed or there will be a place right next to your freezer that is hotter than the sun.
This is rediculus. The freezer is connected to only 1 door, and over 100 simple meals just spoiled. Is this a bug? Because this is just stupid.
Can you post a screenshot of your room?
I don't think that it is a bug, your room probably isn't optimal.
Might this be heat wave related? It's a real grinder for me too that in heat waves you can't keep food fresh.
Multiple coolers for a freezer is a must during a heatwave or if the freezer is quite large.
Based on size you may not have enough coolers. Whats the outside temp. So many variables here...
Quote from: muffins on February 09, 2016, 11:50:49 AM
Multiple coolers for a freezer is a must during a heatwave or if the freezer is quite large.
It did occur to me that more coolers might be the answer. But regardless of the number or how cold I set them, I could not keep food fresh during a heatwave. Errors like having the cooler the wrong way round (I can't be the only one to of done that!?), not enough coolers, or air locks etc etc weren't the cause. I thought it was 'just rimworld' throwing another curve ball to ruin your day. So I looked at mods - ReheatDist - and started paying attention to temperatures in the duct work. And noticed that during a heatwave pipework only 2 tiles away from the cooler would show a positive temperature value (even though all the coolers were set to maximum, -60°C or there about). To me it was almost like the game was running code during a heatwave that basically said "ha! heatwave, screw you".
I found it so frustrating that I just turned off heatwaves entirely.
I do want to ask if this is the experience of others (to reiterate: During a heatwave, regardless of how many coolers I add, or at what temperature I set them too (either vanilla coolers or those in reheatdist) I can not maintain the freezers temperature). I'm guessing from your post muffins that this is not the case for you? So clearly if others can keep food fresh during a heatwave, the problem lies with my design somewhere, though where I do not know. Because for me adding more coolers made no difference. Let's say you have a 10 tile square freezer, 2 vanilla coolers is enough to hold a steady -3°C, yet adding additional, 3, 4 or 5 coolers made no difference to the freezers temperature during a heatwave, none.
Might it be some sort of tipping point scenario? The game calculates the variables regarding a freezer, knows that to cool a freezer of that size you need X number, so until you reach that critical number, temperatures wont drop lower?
If you guys tell me that it is unequivocally possible to keep a freezer frozen during a heatwave, then I'll re enable them, and just keep on adding coolers.. I have to say in my little 10x10 tile freezer example, I did not try adding say 30 coolers. It's the fact that going from a default of 2 coolers, then adding a 3rd, then a 4th or 5th would yield no discernible change in freezer temperature. Hence me wondering if it's just the games code regarding some sort of tipping point / critical number of coolers.
My freezer is about this design: ( Btw it is a heatwave. )
WWWWWWWWWW
W W
W D
W WWWWW D=door W= wall C=Cooler
W W
W W
W W
W W
WWWCWW
Whats the outside temp? Im guessing most of the walls here back onto the outside and not another internal room (insulation is a thing). It sounds like you simply arent pushing enough cool air into the freezer to offset the heat being pushed in. More coolers is the answer.
Quote from: Ectoplasm on February 09, 2016, 01:46:35 PMI do want to ask if this is the experience of others (to reiterate: During a heatwave, regardless of how many coolers I add, or at what temperature I set them too (either vanilla coolers or those in reheatdist) I can not maintain the freezers temperature).
My freezer: 9x11 internal tiles. Wood walls with 2 doors. 2 coolers set to -20c. Room temp normally: ~-15c. No airlock system.
Heatwave: 40c+ during day. 25c+ during night. Forest biome.
The freezer went to 3-5c during the day. It dropped to -5c at night. If I forbid both doors it drops and stays constant at -7c regardless of whether it's day or night.
As far as I can tell it doesn't matter what temperature you set the coolers to they aim to reach that temperature just as hard whether they're 1 degree off or 50 degrees.
Maybe post a screenshot of your set-up?
.....Viagra.
Huh?
Wha?...
OH! I mean, i tho...
I mean, "huge problem" i was like...
Ehh, nevermind...
*teleporting away*
I tried to add another cooler. Now.... I just got a solar flare........... Yea..... atleast 50 meals just spoiled. Fun.
Quote from: LordGoldFish on February 09, 2016, 03:31:15 PM
I tried to add another cooler. Now.... I just got a solar flare........... Yea..... atleast 50 meals just spoiled. Fun.
Welcome to Rimworld haha
Can you post a screenshot tho?
Yes, solar flares will cook your food a bit. But it takes 5 days for the food to spoil and the flare only lasts one day so generally they're survivable.
Heat waves are a pain but unmanageable. You may need three coolers to keep a 9x9 refrigerator below freezing. But even if they go above freezing it's still refrigerated, so will take a while to spoil.
From what I can see you have a pretty large fridge with only one cooler. Nope, that won't work, you need three!
I've played around with heatwaves a bit more. I'm pretty sure that adding more freezers won't solve most people's problems. The issue isn't that the number of coolers can't handle the size of the freezer, but rather that the room is being exposed to hot air when the doors open.
Screenshots from my current game (you can't see the mouse but it's over the 9x11 freezer, not the smaller one with meals in it):
http://i.imgur.com/4qWcMzx.png <-- temperature at time of screenshot: 37c
http://i.imgur.com/AIA6lMo.png <-- temperature at time of screenshot: 25c
Once colonists start opening doors the temperature in the freezer begins to rise rapidly and has difficulty staying under 5c.
I think, design-wise, it's better to have smaller purpose-built freezers than one general-purpose freezer. So you could have a meals/booze freezer between the kitchen and the dining hall. As this doesn't have to be constantly frozen fluctuations in temperature aren't an issue. I have a small meatlocker for corpses (not in screenshot) which basically nobody goes into, so it stays under freezing irrespective of the temperature outside. You'll need a main freezer for the kitchen, but for example my setup above only has the cooks and the odd hauler from the greenhouse across the way go into it. Even that's still enough to cause the temperatures to skyrocket, which really highlights the ongoing impact if you were using a single main freezer that everybody used regularly.
I've not really experimented with airlocks but to me that seems an inferior solution, as it doesn't actually stop the problem of the freezer being constantly opened.
Quote from: Veneke on February 10, 2016, 05:03:41 AM
I've played around with heatwaves a bit more. I'm pretty sure that adding more freezers won't solve most people's problems. The issue isn't that the number of coolers can't handle the size of the freezer, but rather that the room is being exposed to hot air when the doors open.
Screenshots from my current game (you can't see the mouse but it's over the 9x11 freezer, not the smaller one with meals in it):
http://i.imgur.com/4qWcMzx.png <-- temperature at time of screenshot: 37c
http://i.imgur.com/AIA6lMo.png <-- temperature at time of screenshot: 25c
Once colonists start opening doors the temperature in the freezer begins to rise rapidly and has difficulty staying under 5c.
I think, design-wise, it's better to have smaller purpose-built freezers than one general-purpose freezer. So you could have a meals/booze freezer between the kitchen and the dining hall. As this doesn't have to be constantly frozen fluctuations in temperature aren't an issue. I have a small meatlocker for corpses (not in screenshot) which basically nobody goes into, so it stays under freezing irrespective of the temperature outside. You'll need a main freezer for the kitchen, but for example my setup above only has the cooks and the odd hauler from the greenhouse across the way go into it. Even that's still enough to cause the temperatures to skyrocket, which really highlights the ongoing impact if you were using a single main freezer that everybody used regularly.
I've not really experimented with airlocks but to me that seems an inferior solution, as it doesn't actually stop the problem of the freezer being constantly opened.
This is exactly my point! During a heatwave you
can not maintain a freezers temperature below zero (clearly from your testing if you lock the doors you can, though starving your colonists isn't really an option!). I do hope that at some point in the future the way temperature is implemented gets tweaked.
For example, if I wanted to munch on ice cubes in the middle of Death Valley - I could. If I wanted to keep my chicken nuggets frozen in the center of the Lut Desert (just googled it - an average temperature of 70°C / 159°F) Then again, I could. We have the technology! In rimworld you can build geothermal generators and space ships, but can't keep a pot roast fresh? It's just silly. There's already enough ways in the game to shut down power supplies and throw a spanner in to the works, to have a system where you can't keep your food fresh as well is a little over the top. It just doesn't sit well with me. Additional research options to increase the efficiency of cooler/heating units could be a solution.
Another example, when you build a mountain base (and during a heatwave) Temperatures go nuts. Which isn't indicative of reality where cave systems generally have stable environments. Early humans lived in caves systems for this very reason. Of course it's shaky ground to start comparing reality with fantasy.. But it just seems
unnatural the way temperature is currently implemented, and I do hope that it gets a little rework at some point.
As for airlocks, they do seem to help stabalise temperatures, and the smaller the freezer, the more noticeable it is. Temperatures just don't fluctuate as much when you add an airlock to the freezer, this is something I tested myself a while back.
Quote from: Ectoplasm on February 10, 2016, 07:13:19 AMThis is exactly my point! During a heatwave you can not maintain a freezers temperature below zero (clearly from your testing if you lock the doors you can, though starving your colonists isn't really an option!). I do hope that at some point in the future the way temperature is implemented gets tweaked.
If temperature didn't immediately attempt to auto-balance then that would solve the problem, sure. Should that be tweaked though? A heatwave is supposedly a major event after all, so it should cause difficulties in keeping things frozen.
Honestly this feels like a pretty reasonable challenge posed by a heatwave, and given that you can mitigate most/all of the damage with good base design (eg using multiple small freezers for specific purposes or an airlock) and active player involvement (deciding when to lock down freezers to keep it frozen) this really doesn't seem to warrant an alteration to the general mechanics of how temperature works.
I haven't done a mountain base in ages, but temperature does get wonky in very small rooms so that could very well need to be looked at and adjusted.
The solution for that is additional coolers, double insulation and airlocks.
Even if the temperature is 50°C outside, if you have enough coolers it will maintain your temperature inside below 0°C.
Which wouldn't happen in real life, unless you use a cooling tower or a heat exchanger with water to dissipate part of the heat.
Quote from: Listen1 on February 10, 2016, 08:11:23 AMEven if the temperature is 50°C outside, if you have enough coolers it will maintain your temperature inside below 0°C.
I just checked this to get some actual numbers: 4 coolers (set to -20 degrees) will keep a 9x11 wood room at -10 to -15 degrees even with an outside daytime temperature of 50ish degrees. It needed that fourth cooler though. Without an airlock you get a pretty rapid rise in temperatures, but with an airlock there's hardly any temperature change when the doors open and close.
Quote from: Listen1 on February 10, 2016, 08:11:23 AM
The solution for that is additional coolers, double insulation and airlocks.
Which wouldn't happen in real life, unless you use a cooling tower or a heat exchanger with water to dissipate part of the heat.
All electric coolers use heat exchangers based on the carnot cycle. What did you think the ones in RW use?
Quote from: Veneke on February 10, 2016, 09:37:37 AM
I just checked this to get some actual numbers: 4 coolers (set to -20 degrees) will keep a 9x11 wood room at -10 to -15 degrees even with an outside daytime temperature of 50ish degrees. It needed that fourth cooler though. Without an airlock you get a pretty rapid rise in temperatures, but with an airlock there's hardly any temperature change when the doors open and close.
I'll have to turn back on heatwaves then, I clearly didn't try hard enough or just add enough coolers...
Quote from: NuclearNate on February 10, 2016, 12:51:19 PM
Quote from: Listen1 on February 10, 2016, 08:11:23 AM
The solution for that is additional coolers, double insulation and airlocks.
Which wouldn't happen in real life, unless you use a cooling tower or a heat exchanger with water to dissipate part of the heat.
All electric coolers use heat exchangers based on the carnot cycle. What did you think the ones in RW use?
I believe that they use the same system as the eletric coolers. Since you have a standalone cooler that can only condensate the gas with a fan or air-cooler. For it's efficiency, the local temperature and the wet bulb themperture must be bellow the condensation temperature, that is usually around 35°C to 40°C.
If room or ambient temperature is above condensation temperature, you will never have the full condensation. Leading to alot of problems. In RL you would need use cooling tower (not sure if it would work, since it's based in the air cooler, but with water together) or a plate/tube heat exchanger with water at a lower temperature passing through.
Insulation would be huge. Honestly id have the freezer WITHIN a larger structure, and have that structure cooled for comfort. Also using denser materials than wood, wood is very bad insulator, so all the outside heat is effecting the freezer far more, since 1, its surrounded by baking sun on all sides and 2, wood walls do terrible jobs of keeping cold in / heat out.
Easiest fix would be wrapping a 2nd wall around it, having the freezer in a 2ndary structure so the heat has a "dampening" zone. Even in the shade stuff cools down a bit, so you might not even need more coolers for the extra room.
And upgrade from wood, at least mine into a cave wall for the freezer, rock insulates much better.
In the end, no amount of heating / cooling matters if there isn't enough insulation.
Quote from: mumblemumbleIn the end, no amount of heating / cooling matters if there isn't enough insulation.
I'm not in a position to test atm but insulation doesn't seem to matter all that much. The large wood walled freezer that I talked about above managed 50 degrees plus just fine with the four coolers. It's controlling how often the room is exposed to outside air that's the major factor in whether the freezer can handle a heatwave. You might be able to get away with fewer coolers with better insulation though, that's probably true.
Its not just having thicker walls, but staggered heat zones. Having a main base at say, 70 with ac during heat wave, drastically helps the freezer, since the heat outside is much less to heat the freezer, compared to thicker walls but much higher heat.
I don't know exactly how the math works, but something like rooms exchange heat with nearby ones and try to eventually level out, while thicker walls reduce the transfer rate.
Point is, a buffer zone which is 70 or even 90 would do better than having it be 120 something directly outside, and would also mean less heating when doors are opened, as it needs to heat up the buffer before the freezer.
I did some testing.
(http://i.imgur.com/g0Gau5n.jpg)
1 - Default Freezer (granite)
2 - With Airlock
3 - With double cooler
4 - Default with wooden walls
5 - With thick walls (granite)
6 - With thick walls, airlock and double cooler
All freezers were set to -20C. There was some variation during the day/night (look at the results for 6). Here were the results.
At 45C
1 0C
2 -6C
3 -17C
4 1C
5 -10C
6 -20C
At 50C
1 5C
2 -4C
3 -14C
4 6C
5 -5C
6 -17C
At 60C
1 12C
2 4C
3 -3C
4 13C
5 4C
6 -20C
Quote from: muffins on February 11, 2016, 01:15:01 AM
I did some testing.
(http://i.imgur.com/g0Gau5n.jpg)
<snip>
Thanks for this! Always wondered whether my double walls and airlock were really doing anything!
My fridge is normally directly connected to the kitchen area and then also to the outdoor farm. I put an airlock at the farm door and I keep my kitchen at 15C, tends to work quite well even during heatwaves :)
Quote from: Adamiks on February 09, 2016, 03:28:40 PM
.....Viagra.
Huh?
Wha?...
OH! I mean, i tho...
I mean, "huge problem" i was like...
Ehh, nevermind...
*teleporting away*
I can easily get a hold of a flyer for a Sangoma (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_healers_of_South_Africa (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_healers_of_South_Africa)) that promises to fix such problems... :P
Quote from: muffins on February 11, 2016, 01:15:01 AM
I did some testing.
(http://i.imgur.com/g0Gau5n.jpg)
Very interesting indeed! Thanks!
This more or less confirms what I thought about insulation: a cooler is worth more than a layer of insulation (3v5) by a good bit, and the insulation difference between wood and stone is marginal (1v4).
The airlock certainly has an impact (the heat staggering effect mumbles mentioned), but 6-10 degrees is rather more than I would have thought given its not in active use. I wonder though, is the temperature in 2 slowly rising in the airlock section? If it is then, once that equalizes with the outside, won't 2 eventually have the same temperature as 1?
As the air lock trades heat with the outiside, it also trades with the inside. So the tile in the airlock is higher than the temperature of the fridge, and lower then the outside temp.
Fun fact, air isolation (Wall - Space - Wall - Fridge) dosent work anywhere as good as double insulation. The heat exchange is too high.
That is excellent muffins! Thanks for taking the time to do that. Looking at those results I can instantly see that it was actually the use of wood to build the freezer that would of been the issue for me in the past.
Quote from: Ectoplasm on February 11, 2016, 08:07:39 AM
That is excellent muffins! Thanks for taking the time to do that. Looking at those results I can instantly see that it was actually the use of wood to build the freezer that would of been the issue for me in the past.
Wait, what? I took those numbers to mean that was the least important thing to take into consideration. Comparing the plain stone to plain wood, there was only a 1 degree difference at all 3 outdoor temps. Unless I am reading something incorrectly, of course.
I just have two doors right after each other, works well enough for me and saves a bit of space. Did you test that at all?
Thank you Muffins for providing some real experimental data.
It looks like the results are: (1) Putting more coolers helps the most, (2) airlocks and thicker walls help too.
The airlocks probably make more of a difference when you have a large number of colonists running in an out for their daily meal. It might be worthwhile to make a separate small stockpile with a few day's food for everyone and have the food in your main freezer marked forbidden so they leave it alone.
Maybe make the airlock really big with its own cooler and put all the meals in there?
I always use double doors when i do double walls, on the assumption that it helps with the insulation,that won't help if you have an airlock though. Another thing that would help is putting a cooler set to the same temp as the inner fridge, in the airlock itself, it should completely eliminate heat transfer when the doors open.
Quote from: Veneke on February 11, 2016, 05:51:59 AM
Quote from: muffins on February 11, 2016, 01:15:01 AM
I did some testing.
(http://i.imgur.com/g0Gau5n.jpg)
Very interesting indeed! Thanks!
This more or less confirms what I thought about insulation: a cooler is worth more than a layer of insulation (3v5) by a good bit, and the insulation difference between wood and stone is marginal (1v4).
The airlock certainly has an impact (the heat staggering effect mumbles mentioned), but 6-10 degrees is rather more than I would have thought given its not in active use. I wonder though, is the temperature in 2 slowly rising in the airlock section? If it is then, once that equalizes with the outside, won't 2 eventually have the same temperature as 1?
This answered a long standing question for me thanks! :D
I'm actually curious to see if this works the same way for keeping heat in. May test this as some point.
Quote from: JimmyAgnt007 on February 11, 2016, 03:03:59 PM
Maybe make the airlock really big with its own cooler and put all the meals in there?
That's actually a pretty neat idea. And it doesn't need to be huge, just 3x3, large enough for a week's food. When it is about to empty set its priority to high so it gets restocked, then put it back to normal.
Another helpful tip: put your cookstove and brewery in the freezer. (Make sure your cook has a parka :)