Walls mountains and insulation

[oatbag]

So it seems like building into a mountain doesn't provide any insulation, is that correct?

Similarly, would building double walls make heat loss any slower?  Do some materials insulate better than others, or is it all, wall and then outside regardless of whether its un-mined rock or outside?

I've tried building long walk in freezers for food plus cooling for the adjacent rooms, but its getting mixed results.  Doors seem to disrupt the temp change a bit - so has anyone tried very large single room dorms, where the heat/cooling efficiency and spacious interior compensates for the shared room penalty?

I'm sorry if this has bee discusses already.  thanks!

[Innese]

To the best of my my knowledge material/wall thickness (currently) do not insulate in any fashion.
I do know that doors, when opened for any reason, will cause temperatures to change.

Since A8 launched I've found myself building my mountain bunkers with fewer doors so I don't have to worry about a heater in each and every room. I also build a 2-3 door 'airlock' for my freezer to keep it from heating up. I also use the exhaust from cooling my freezer to heat the rest of my bunker.

[EscapeZeppelin]

To the best of my my knowledge material/wall thickness (currently) do not insulate in any fashion.
I do know that doors, when opened for any reason, will cause temperatures to change.

Since A8 launched I've found myself building my mountain bunkers with fewer doors so I don't have to worry about a heater in each and every room. I also build a 2-3 door 'airlock' for my freezer to keep it from heating up. I also use the exhaust from cooling my freezer to heat the rest of my bunker.

It seems that walls are perfect insulators no matter what material or thickness. Heat doesn't appear to escape through walls at all, only doors.

And building in the jungle I've actually done the opposite. The fridge is the coldest place in the base and opening and closing the door lets the cold air out, cooling the rest of the base. I actually had to knock some holes in the walls since the kitchen was cooling down to about 45 F with the cook repeatedly opening the door.

[artemas]

Yeah, walls do appear to be perfect insulators. I recently had a huge fire in the hydroponics room, which was built into the mountain. Because the heat could only escape through one of two doors, it ended up heating the room up to nearly 1000 degrees Celsius, killing two thirds of my colony stuck in there, and completely melting everything. The neighbouring room got up to 500 C, and the neighbouring rooms of THAT room only 200 C. I think that perhaps walls should leak at least some heat.

[codyo]

There seems to be some heat loss in my mountain base for some reason.

I have an airlocked entrance room at 26 C. The main hall behind that at 20 C.
Then a lot of the rooms in the rear of the base drop down to 7 C during the winter. Shouldn't those rooms be gradually going up to equalize with the temperature of the main hall? Since that's the only source of temperature they're connected to.

[waldo2000]

I'd say double check that you don't have a hole in a roof some where. I tested double walls and wall materials (excluding mountains and rock roof) and there was heat transfer but it was at the same rate, a door-less room cooled to -40 with two coolers will steadily raise in temperature.

[Cimanyd]

Here's what Tynan says:

"Temperature leaks
-Through doors, faster if door is open (door leakage)
-Away to the outdoors proportional to room area (roof leakage)

Walls are irrelevant."


"Coolers are like walls.

Roof type is irrelevant."

[codyo]

The roof leakage explains it then. Too bad being under a mountain isn't enough.

[ZestyLemons]

While it sucks that wall thickness/insulation doesn't matter, to be fair I think it would be kinda tricky to implement programming wise.

[Kelian]

While it sucks that wall thickness/insulation doesn't matter, to be fair I think it would be kinda tricky to implement programming wise.

Not really? I'd think it'd just be assigning values to material type. Overhead mountain = X so leakage, temperature drift = X Wood = X times 1.5 due to material?

Idk. Maybe later. It's still early alpha, we aren't even to beta yet.

[ZestyLemons]

While it sucks that wall thickness/insulation doesn't matter, to be fair I think it would be kinda tricky to implement programming wise.

Not really? I'd think it'd just be assigning values to material type. Overhead mountain = X so leakage, temperature drift = X Wood = X times 1.5 due to material?

Idk. Maybe later. It's still early alpha, we aren't even to beta yet.

That's not the hard part I think, the hard part would be knowing how the thickness of a wall should affect heat loss.

How does a room know how thick its walls are?
What if the walls aren't uniform (one is thicker than the other)?
What if the room's walls are made out of multiple materials?

Stuff like that seems tricky to tackle.

[wileama]

It seems that walls are perfect insulators no matter what material or thickness. Heat doesn't appear to escape through walls at all, only doors.

Okay so I'm clearly a Noob, who hasn't posted much, but this quote right here is driving me up a wall. I've been playing base builder with the intention of making an awesome OP mountain bunker that NORAD would be envious of. Their is only one entrance to my base, with four, count them four doors. All the interior space of my base is labeled as inside. Yet the temperature in dorm rooms in the middle of the base fluctuates as if it was in the middle of a field. When I mouse over any of my walls they are all listed as outside.  Temperature controlling the common areas, and hallways of the base is not enough. I have to actively control the temperature in all of my rooms to keep my entire base at a comfortable temperature year round. I've considered putting more doors on the dorm rooms, and then wedging them open with a stone chuck. That just seems stupid though.

So am I missing something. What are the other OP base builders doing. Cause I love the idea of temperature, but the current implementation is driving me a bit nut. Please tell me I'm missing something...

[nuschler22]

It seems that walls are perfect insulators no matter what material or thickness. Heat doesn't appear to escape through walls at all, only doors.

Okay so I'm clearly a Noob, who hasn't posted much, but this quote right here is driving me up a wall. I've been playing base builder with the intention of making an awesome OP mountain bunker that NORAD would be envious of. Their is only one entrance to my base, with four, count them four doors. All the interior space of my base is labeled as inside. Yet the temperature in dorm rooms in the middle of the base fluctuates as if it was in the middle of a field. When I mouse over any of my walls they are all listed as outside.  Temperature controlling the common areas, and hallways of the base is not enough. I have to actively control the temperature in all of my rooms to keep my entire base at a comfortable temperature year round. I've considered putting more doors on the dorm rooms, and then wedging them open with a stone chuck. That just seems stupid though.

So am I missing something. What are the other OP base builders doing. Cause I love the idea of temperature, but the current implementation is driving me a bit nut. Please tell me I'm missing something...

There are some mods that tackle this problem.  One is a vent.  I don't know how that works but it looks a bit bulky to me.

There is another that has floor tiles that are heated.  The same mod (I believe) turned into a bit more and has fans, portable heaters, industrial heaters and coolers.  These all take up quite a bit of energy (I think 100w for a simple room heater) so if you have a lot of colonists, it gets quite power hungry.

[lokarn]

Hmmm. Based on the quote someone posted about heat leaking through doors I'd assume you could use a wall with several doors in it as a "vent" system to heat a base if you connected that to a geyser area. Like a long cooridoor that runs around your base, or through the center with doors every so often in it. You would want to be sure your colonists had no reason to open the doors, or go inside that hallway though.

[Chibiabos]

Something I found that may help other struggling ... as nice as it is to have efficient doors to provide access with one door to 3 or more rooms, conserving power and material for building doors, coolers (cold storage rooms for perishable food and other items) really need to have a dedicated door that has no other purpose (that is, it is only used for going into or our of the cooler).  That way, the door only opens when someone is trying to get into or out of the cooler, instead of between other rooms one might be tempted to link the door to if one is trying to make doors as efficient as possible.