Converting unroofed to outdoor?

[coldcell]

Is it possible to covert unroofed area into outdoor?

I'm making a mountain base and in my refrigerator room, I use the "remove roof" tool to clear the mountain roof to give me 3x3 area. The plan is to use 3 coolers to exhaust the heat in this 3x3 area. However my 3 coolers are operating at high power, even though my refrigerator room is only 12x12 storage area. I'm thinking is this because the 3x3 area is unroofed instead of outdoor?

Thanks!

[DeathWeasel]

What is the temperature of the unroofed area? If it is the same as the outside, you're doing it right.

[Lys]

Unroofed is basically outdoor, in terms of heat dissipation. However since it is an enclosed room, it can't be exactly "outdoor". As long as the unroofed does not have a bracketed number behind it (i.e. "Unroofed (2)") then you are doing the best possible. An exhaust space of 3x3 should be large enough for anything, my exhausts were usually 1x1 or at most 1x2.

[coldcell]

It says unroofed (4). I use the zone to make it a non-roof area, but somehow it's still giving me unroofed. Temp in the 3x3 area is 42c while outdoor normally is 25c. I'm at loss because 3 coolers seems excessive for the storage area, yet the indoor tmp is hovering around 0c - 1c.

I'm using debug tool to clear area and checking if it's smth I miss =\

[Lys]

Well, you are missing 5 spaces from having it unroofed (note that your builders must do the unroofing manually, so they need to actually be able to reach those spaces). But then again, 42c should do nothing, my exhaust pipes have usually been above 100c and the freezing was fine.
What are your coolers set to? If you set them to 0° then it is obvious why you have this issue. Set them to a few degrees below 0° and you will achieve constant freezing. (The thing is, that coolers will only cool up to exactly 0° - then they stop working, thus the room heats up to 1° again at which point the freezers will kick in again).

[DeathWeasel]

It says unroofed (4). I use the zone to make it a non-roof area, but somehow it's still giving me unroofed. Temp in the 3x3 area is 42c while outdoor normally is 25c. I'm at loss because 3 coolers seems excessive for the storage area, yet the indoor tmp is hovering around 0c - 1c.

I'm using debug tool to clear area and checking if it's smth I miss =\

Unroofed (4) means there are only 4 unroofed squares, but a 3x3 area should have 9. Something doesn't seem right but I'm not sure how to fix it.

For what it's worth, I typically just have my coolers vent straight in to my main hallway and let the intrinsic cooling properties of a mountain base handle the excess heat.

[zeidrich]

I think you're worrying about the wrong thing.

High power just means that it's cooling.  The cooler will always be running at high power unless the room is already colder than the target temperature, which isn't going to happen unless you have a second cooler, or ambient temperature lowers your cooler room temperature.

So for instance, if you have a cooler in the winter, and it's set to -5, and the outdoors temperature is -20, and you leave the door open, your room will get to -6 or lower and the cooler will go into low power.

If, on the other hand, the temperature is +20, and you're trying to cool the room and it's -5 inside, it's going to stay high power forever.

If you have 2 coolers, and one is set at -5, and one is set at -10, when the -10 cooler gets it down below -5, the the -5 cooler will go into low power.

[coldcell]

Ah you guys are right! There were some areas I marked to be no roof, but since the coolers are blocking the way, my pawns couldn't get to them. I deconstructed a cooler, unroofed the area and now it's showing unroofed (9). My coolers are also working well thanks!

[Limdood]

you can save power by setting your 3 coolers to -6, -8,and -10.....the last cooler will try to get it down to -10, and will almost always be at high power.  But as it gets down to -10, the other two will switch to low power.  If a heat wave hits, or as the 1 cooler at -10 can't cut it, the other two will turn on to help.

only really useful if you use batteries, otherwise the constant off and on might shut some things down if you're close to max power use, and the on/off for power use is slow to kick in.