Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Cooling My A/V Closet

As an engineer, I have to ask the obvious question. Why don't you eliminate the closet?

A sentence that starts with "As an engineer" doesn't tend to end well, does it?

Not sure if the 'eliminate' suggestion was serious or in jest, but I don't want all of my components visible in the room, and some of them throw off a ridiculous amount of light and noise, so keeping the door there serves a function of isolating both to the closet (with the heat unfortunately) from the viewing area.

What is behind the closet and to either side of it behind the wall?

Good question... I had to go look myself.



When you walk into the closet, the wall you are facing backs to a guest room wall. The left wall I'm not as sure about. I think it is an interior wall with some 'dead space' (maybe 2-3') in the house between where the bathroom ends and that closet begins.

What did you have in mind?

Unfortunately, I now have a VERY clear picture of exactly what is behind the wall that you asked about... Answer: A shower... with a leak... yes, water has slowly been seeping out of the shower and into the walls, floor, etc. for the last two weeks (it's a new house and the leak didn't make itself known until we had visitors here using the shower).

So... we now have huge holes cut in the floor/wall/ceiling and I had to disassemble the entire rack and empty the closet. No music/movies for the last 3 days...

In any case, it's in recovery mode now (water remediation company has been drying it for days and monitoring for mold, etc.)... rather than mix my actual question with this sob story, I'll post that in a separate thread in case anyone got bored with this post and stopped reading long ago.

Better you found that leak now, then after everything got installed and possibly damaged!

For those of you still with me, thanks.

After complaining as to what a total disaster this has been, I've managed to twist the builder's arm into installing a bathroom vent in the closet to deal with the heat. When the electrical guy came today to run the wiring for the vent, he strongly recommended against the vent, saying that he'd done this for a couple of his friends in their A/V closets and didn't think that the vent would do any good because it's going to be pulling hot air from the closet into an attic that is likely going to be filled with even hotter air. (for much of the year in TX anyway) In fact, he seemed to be worried that hot air from the attic could actually seep back through the fan opening into the closet, which seems like a valid concern.

He did come up with a good recommendation though as we looked at our closet, which was to cut a pass-through vent to the lower right of the closet door above the baseboard (see the picture below). We'll put registers on both sides to make it look like an A/C vent, and in the position it is in in the room, it should be relatively hidden from the seating area.


The rack sits directly opposite the place where the register will be cut, so hopefully this adds some good airflow into the closet (picture).


The problem I believe is that if I just put in this passive airflow vent, I don't have a good way for the air to get both in and out. I could put a fan inside the closet to circulate the air, which eventually should work its way out of the closet, or, going against the advice of the electrician (note, not an HVAC guy), I could also have the builder install the bathroom fan on the right wall to suck the hot air into the attic.

I need to decide by late tonight so I can go get the fan by tomorrow if I want them to put it in. They're doing it at no cost, so my only risk is if I'm somehow going to do myself more harm than good by putting the fan into the wall. I found a 70 CFM vent fan that is only 1.0 sones... (~40 DB), but now with the passthrough cut in the wall, I suppose there is a risk that this will be noticeably loud even with the door closed... 40db is described as the volume of your refrigerator humming, but the seating is a good 10' away from the vent hole that will be cut and the closet door will remain closed.

Long story short, any advice is appreciated... should I have the builder put the fan in at no cost to me, or should I leave well enough alone and hope that the passive airway (perhaps with a fan in the closet to circulate air) will be effective enough to keep things cool?

Can you locate the vent and the fan at the top of your wall? Heat rises so it will encounter less restriction going up than going down.

Yep, the vent fan (blower) will be at the top of the wall, and the air intake register at the bottom. I'm hoping that this results in the cool air flowing in at the bottom and getting sucked out at the top through the blower. I'm pretty sure this should work, it was just that the electrician was so adamant about it not working that it gave me pause.

Thanks for the response Mojo.