Furnetcha®

Computer Closet Design (and why this is relevant to Furnetcha)

Fueling Furnetcha is my dream to combine technology and woodworking. My passions for design and making things are universal and medium agnostic. In other words, I love designing and making both tangible (e.g., furniture, homes, gadgets) and intangible things (e.g., software).

For the past 3 years one BIG project has dominated my life: the remodel of our condo. Since I only started Furnetcha last year, completing the remodel has taken priority. Frankly it has taken away from my ability to invest as much time as I wanted in Furnetcha.

So not only is my workshop an intentional combination of all my interests, but my home has been too. Day or night I’m living a blur but none of it feels like work to me. There’s no doubt that it is difficult work but the blur has sometimes helped! Certainly my personal schedule has been more flexible. The flip side is that my Furnetcha clients have unfortunately suffered long delays.

Thus I have decided to share my designs, lessons, successes, & failures of my remodel through this Furnetcha site.

In fact, Furnetcha would not exist if it were not for this remodel project. I’ll post the full story behind Furnetcha later on. (One critical element I can’t help but share now: My dining room will have one wall that will look like curtains; it will actually be made from CNC milled panels. But how does one make CNC milled panels? My answer: Build a CNC machine!)

Totally Geeked Out

This story is really about one part of the remodel project where I let the computer geek in me run totally wild. In the floor plans I included a computer closet where almost all wiring for the entire house would begin & end. This closet is where almost all of the electronics live too. The closet was already framed and not part of the actual remodel, but every other wall around it was to be demolished and rebuilt. This made wiring easier. But having all of this wiring and equipment together pretty much makes it a mini data center! And just like a real data center, the hardest problems aren’t managing the computers or networks; the hardest problems are providing consistent power and cooling.

Once the electrician started snaking all the wires, the wire bundles started piling up and I freaked out. Without a design in hand, how would all of the wires get organized? Where would all of the components go? Determined not to do a half-ass job, I knew the design had to be fast-tracked. Otherwise components would get stacked on top of each other, rats nests of power strips would create a fire hazard, and I’d spend hours debugging cabling – only to have to do it all over again once I had the design.

There is a ton of thinking that went into the plan but for now I’ll just share the physical design for the closet and some pictures of how it came out. I went a little overboard.

Sketchup

My initial 2D design done in Sketchup:

As soon as I got a first draft of this picture, I jumped in and started building it. Truth be told, the original design did not include a rolling rack; it was meant to be a swivel rack. But when you calculate the diagonal dimension of a rack-mounted computer, for example, you realize that swiveling really isn’t an efficient use of space. But accessing the front and back of every component is critical, especially for someone crazy like me who is constantly adding and removing components, and of course, rewiring. I’ve often said, “I spend 25% of my life doing some sort of wiring” and I’m pretty sure that is not an exaggeration. This project involved A LOT of wiring.

Rack Features

• All four corners of the rack are 30U steel server rack L brackets I bought on eBay. (Server rack equipment is NOT cheap!)
• The rack rolls side-to-side on 4 bearings which ride on an aluminum track. The aluminum was attached to a poplar rail which I rabbeted to hold the aluminum. The poplar was supported by cleats I secured to the steel studs. (Bearings and threaded rods came from McMaster-Carr.)
• The poplar rails are supported by steel L brackets. I’d guess this setup can support roughly 150-250lbs.
• The face of the closet is trimmed with walnut (only main piece shown in pictures).
• All cables have both strain relief and fixed attachment points to allow for the rack to roll without concern of snapping off a connector.
• A mirror provides quick view to the back of the components.
• Cable modem, router, & Vonage device (soon to be removed) are mounted to the wall because they are thin and rarely need to be accessed. The rack slides right by them.
• D-Link ANT24-0230 external antenna is connected to one of my D-Link DIR-655 routers. The antenna is mounted on the other side of the wall, tucked neatly up in the corner of a soffet in the living room. I expected dramatically improved range but am not incredibly impressed. It is much better than having the router in the closet, but the signal still degrades quickly even 40 feet away on line of sight.
• There are two dedicated 15A circuits running into the closet. A leftover Monster Cable power strip is used basically as a surge protector for the APC UPS. All of the networking components, security DVR, and computers run off the UPS. The UPS has a USB port that tells my NAS to shut down nicely when the power goes out. Sweet feature!
• With this much equipment, the closet gets hot! It easily climbs to greater than 90° if I leave the doors closed. So there’s a thermostat that will kick on an inline fan mounted near the master bath. When it kicks on, the hot air exhausts through the same duct as the bathroom. Down the road I may consider adding a cold/fresh air supply line from the outside for increased efficiency.
• Monoprice got a ton of business from me on cables, velcro straps, zip ties, HDMI port savers, an HDMI splitter, RJ45 connectors, and a lot more. I love that site! 1000′ of CAT6 for $99!
• I make all of my own CAT6 and coax cables. These tools pay for themselves: RJ45 crimper, coax crimper, and this TRENDnet wire testing tool.
• Belkin Conserve Insight outlet estimates energy usage. The closet is running between $250-$350 per year. I need solar!
• Missing from this rack is the amplifier to power six 8″ and two 6″ in-ceiling speakers spread throughout the master bedroom suite. I did have a huge Denon receiver in there but it was really overkill and I need to sell it to pay for the other random stuff I bought for this rack!
• Green is my favorite color.

Please let me know if you’re interested in hearing any details about the components or the install!

This entry was posted on Friday, October 14th, 2011 at 2:30 am. It is filed under blog, Sketchup, slider. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.