So I know the cooler has a cold and a hot side. I've set up a cooler pointing into my food freezer. I've then build a wall 1x1 around the output (heat) side that goes directly into a vent (that is open) and vents into a workshop room. However, I am getting no heat at all from the output side so the room is not heating up at all.
Any suggestions how to get this to work?
It may not actually produce any heat, just telling you that it can't cool two rooms at once.
Why is the output of the cooler not directly connected to the workshop room? What's the vent for?
I haven't checked recently, but I believe it has been established that the hot end of a cooler will heat up a room. But there are two problems with this setup. In your case, it sounds like the output is going into a very small room, and you haven't stated whether it has a roof or not. If it has no roof the heat will vanish. If it has a roof the room should heat up quickly, but because it is so small it won't add much room to the workshop it is connected to by vent.
The other problem is that the efficiency of a cooler depends on how warm the other side is. So if it is cold outside, it will run more efficiently pumping outside than pumping into your workshop.
Anyway, most important takeaway: check the temperature in the room that the hot end of the cooler is pumping heat into.
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Edit: I just tested by putting a roof over the chimney of one of my kitchens. It immediately heated up from -12'C to +40'C from a single cooler tick. So coolers definitely spit out heat.
These kind of questions do better with screenshots attachments.
Quote from: Scavenger on November 11, 2018, 02:45:49 PM
It may not actually produce any heat, just telling you that it can't cool two rooms at once.
It definitely produced heat in older versions of the game at the very least. Quite a bit. I've always had to vent it out of my mountain bases.
And it still produce heat.
Little setup,
Outside 13°C
Left room 30°C
Right room -9°C
[attachment deleted due to age]
Heat propagation is simplified in the game. I'm not sure exactly how it's handled but it's likely it just can't go from the cooler to the little room to the vent to the big room fast enough to matter. It may also have to do with the fact that you're heating up a tiny room and that tiny room can't appreciably use that heat to heat the bigger room. It'd work in real life, but this is not a heat distribution system simulator :D
I'd try having the cooler go right into the room and not use the separate little vented room and see if that helps. I understand why you did that - you want the option to close that vent and maybe open a vent outside - but it appears to not be a viable option.
Quote from: RaginCajun on November 11, 2018, 02:11:51 PM
So I know the cooler has a cold and a hot side. I've set up a cooler pointing into my food freezer. I've then build a wall 1x1 around the output (heat) side that goes directly into a vent (that is open) and vents into a workshop room. However, I am getting no heat at all from the output side so the room is not heating up at all.
Any suggestions how to get this to work?
Technically this does work. However in practice there are major inconsistencies with how heat/cold propagates through vents and walls into other rooms. If you make a tiny room with a vent to another room that is huge it's possible that the first tiny heated room is so small that it has practically no noticable effect on your workshop room if workshop room is large.
In general I find using heat output of coolers much to inconsistent a solution to heat up a base. You'll either end up with too hot or too cold a base and thus still need to install heaters and passive coolers to regulate temp which kind of ruins the idea of using the heat output of the coolers.
However for smaller practical solutions, that is not base wide but more localized, it can work. For example if you have a freezer in the middle surrounded by hydroponic rooms. You may with some success heat the hydroponic rooms with the heat output from the freezer. The crops that grow there will most likely don't care if the temps range from say 13-35 degrees.
also note that how hard a cooler has to work determines the heat output. so, if it is winter and plenty cold outside, the cooler is doing almost no work and therefore producing almost no heat. it always seems like such a good idea to channel the "free" heat, but in practice it is simpler to just build a heater.
I did this on my current game, after reading this thread. One base is in a very cold area. It basically works but to be honest it adds a lot of complexity. They overheat things in summer and barely make a dent in the deepest part of winter. I had to add a bunch of vents and heaters to handle both cases. Overall I doubt I would bother again except in very desperate cases.
It is possible, but it requires a bit of architectural foresight. I've used it for a couple of colonies already to decent effect.
(https://i.imgur.com/FGkvQt4.jpg)
Had all of my freezers direct their heat into an improvised vent system that would then distribute the heat to my entire base.
Had a burning room, filled with old/deadman's clothes, that I could ignite in case of emergencies(too extreme outside temperatures, power outages, etc)