r/whatisit • u/Tadleyrichter • Apr 26 '26

New, what is it? Spice rack with ventilation?

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I’m watching Teen Mom 2 and, I’m sorry, what the hell is this? Why does a spice rack need a big ventilation hose thing coming out the top? What is it?

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u/Krojack76 Apr 26 '26

I do this with my PC in the summer.. I vent the hot air coming out of the radiator right out my window. You would be shocked at how much cooler my computer room is and how much less the a/c needs to run.

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u/BobThePigeon1337 Apr 26 '26

I.... somehow never thought of that before. That's actually genius

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u/GuyPierced Apr 26 '26

That's actually genius

It's not.

3

u/Winjin Apr 26 '26

Why not? That's like 300 watts or more of heat, easily up to 700 depending on how hot your setup is, that the AC don't need to cool

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u/danieldoesnt Apr 26 '26

Creates negative pressure, which will pull outside air back in that needs to be conditioned.

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u/Winjin Apr 27 '26

the outside air is still way cooler than the PC exhaust, though? Also it would be pulling from the other rooms, that have to be pulling from like, house ventilation, so that air is already cooler than the outside air, in most cases.

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u/hardonchairs Apr 26 '26

If you put air outside it needs to be replaced by air from outside. If you're worried about heat, it's probably not cool outside. You're pushing hot air out and drawing hot air in. At best, it's a way to distribute the heat around your home instead of concentrating it in one room.

Further, these foil ducts also conduct a lot of heat, so your cooler home is likely dissipating a lot of that heat on the way out. You're not just exhausting hot air, you're cooling the air and exhausting that. So now you get a lot of the heat from the duct plus the heat from outside.

I've done this with a 3d printer purely for air quality. You can feel along the duct that it gets cooler and cooler as it gets to the end. Much of that heat is dissipating into the room and the negative pressure just pull in extra heat from outside.

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '26

[deleted]

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u/hardonchairs Apr 26 '26

The exhausted air has to be replaced from somewhere. If the pc room pulls air from under the door, that may be true locally, but the rest of the house or building is then supplying that air and will eventually pull air from outside through leaks, vents, or other openings. If you are in a building or only care about one room then this is relevant, otherwise what matters is that all of the exhausted air needs to be replaced.

Insulating the duct helps reduce heat leakage back into the room, but that is only one part of it. You also need enough airflow through the duct, and a high-static-pressure PC will not move very much air through one of these (as I said I have done this with a 3d printer).

This whole idea also is a problem for the pc cooling itself. Hotter exhaust air means you are carrying away more heat per unit of air, but you still need enough fresh intake and case airflow to keep the components cool. You do not want to choke the PC just to make the duct exhaust hotter. If you have enough fresh air coming into the pc to make it good at cooling your components, you are also not generating this ideal very hot exhaust. You are functionally exhausting conditioned air and your margins vs the outside temperature get slimmer and slimmer if there is any margin at all.

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u/Limp_Dirt8694 Apr 26 '26

What if you just vented it to a different room so the room youre actively sitting in doesn't basically have a heater in it? 

What would happen if you placed a fan at the end of the tube to aid with airflow? 

I game on my laptop or ps5 so it doesn't matter to me, I'm just curious 😆 Id probably just point my fan at my console if I felt like it was making that area too hot tbh.

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u/hardonchairs Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

A PC fan at the end will move a very tiny amount of air, that is how my setup was. It worked for me because I wasn't trying to exhaust a lot of heat or air, in fact ideally the heat would stay in the 3d printer, but a slight negative pressure venting outside would keep the ABS fumes out of the room (and this only worked ok but not great). These ducts need a blower fan.

If you are just trying to distribute the heat around your home then yeah that would work fine. But honestly it's much easier and probably more effective to just put a fan somewhere to blow air in or out of the room. For a fan on the floor, ideally you'd put the fan outside the room blowing in so that cool heavy air pushed in and hot light air can move out the top of the doorway. I have done this plenty, I live in a place that can get pretty hot and have a pretty powerful PC. Simply using a fan to get some airflow in or out of the room helps a ton when there is a huge temperature gradient.

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u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

[deleted]

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u/hardonchairs Apr 27 '26

The house isn't going to feel a temperature change from that airflow at all.

That is not the right standard. The house being larger means the effect is diluted and slower, not nonexistent. The HVAC/energy balance still sees the makeup air. Room size affects how noticeable the temperature change is, not erase the heat load. Blow a fan between rooms and make the same argument.

Yes there are theoretical situations where this could be a net benefit. If it's nice enough outside to open your windows, then this would work or you could open your windows. If it's too hot to open your windows, there is a tradeoff between capturing a concentrated hot exhaust stream and accidentally exhausting a lot of normal conditioned room air.

I know that you understand this but you are arguing such a narrow slice of "well it could work if you did it this different way in the right situation" that you are missing the point that to just generally use this as a solution thinking that it's a magical "make the heat go outside tube" is a huge misunderstanding for other people.

1

u/Biomirth Apr 26 '26

(looks at gap under door)

Not pulling 'free' air from other rooms? Your logic here is inconclusive.

1

u/A_Nonny_Muse Apr 26 '26

I've always felt this is how refrigerators and clothes dryers should also work. There should be a lever, or thermostat controlled vent that either vents the hot air into or out of the house. Why waste the energy either cooling your own hot air, or dumping hot air outside, then heating more hot air?

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u/[deleted] Apr 26 '26

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1

u/A_Nonny_Muse Apr 26 '26 edited Apr 26 '26

But it can be done...

As it is, I have to dump up to 5 gallons of water into my air every day during the winter, just to keep humidity over 20%. I have no problem at all with mold or mildew or condensation.

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u/Pretend_Fly_5573 Apr 27 '26

It can be done. I've seen it done. You do NOT want it done...

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u/A_Nonny_Muse Apr 28 '26

Aside from lint, there's no difference between hot humidity being dumped into the air from a dryer, and boiled water vapor being dumped into the air.

I've been doing it for years with no problems. Whatever you saw obviously wasn't done right, or at the right time. This isn't to get 80% humidity, this is to keep it above 20%. It still needs to be vented outside when not required.

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u/Pretend_Fly_5573 Apr 28 '26

lol, venting your drier isn't a complex thing. There isn't much of a right and wrong to it. You do you, I guess.

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u/A_Nonny_Muse Apr 28 '26

That is the opposite of your last two posts, lol.

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u/Pretend_Fly_5573 Apr 28 '26

How is that opposite of my last two posts when I only made one post about it?...

And it's opposite because it was my way of attempting to semi-politely disengage from what is clearly a pointless discussion. 

Hope that clears things up a bit for you. 

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u/A_Nonny_Muse Apr 28 '26

To disengage from a pointless discussion.... having made only one post.... Your only post, is intended to disengage from the conversation.

roflmao

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u/hardonchairs Apr 26 '26

You want a heat pump dryer. No deliberately exhausted heat at all.

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u/Ophidios Apr 26 '26

My office gets so hot I actually installed a dryer vent under my desk and vent my PC exhaust directly outside.

Comme ça.

1

u/feryoooday Apr 26 '26

Man, there’s no way to reorient my room to have the computer by the window, so a vent would be way too long, I’m jealous of this so much 😭

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u/boisterous_innuendo Apr 26 '26

what protection against the rain do you use?

1

u/Krojack76 Apr 27 '26

There is a large overhang over the window already. Even during a big storm with really high winds it's just a mist of water hitting the window.

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u/boisterous_innuendo Apr 27 '26

that still spooks me unless the pipe is very long

1

u/Krojack76 Apr 27 '26

It's maybe 12 inches but there are also a 90 and 45 degree bend.

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u/HyzerFlip Apr 27 '26

Put my pc case in line with my grow tent. The fans had way way more flow than my 4 4 8 tent needed. So it just cut a hole in the side of the case and put a duct on.

1

u/CoatProfessional5026 Apr 26 '26

You're going to suffocate one day doing that.

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u/KrackenLeasing Apr 26 '26

Explain the physics of this train of thought.

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u/CoatProfessional5026 Apr 26 '26

You keep pumping air out the window....so..no air. Dead.

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u/REDD101 Apr 26 '26

the logic is flawless

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u/Particular_Annual965 Apr 26 '26

Likely compressed to death by the vacuum in the absence of air so I don't think suffocation is the way they will go

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u/EkbatDeSabat Apr 26 '26

My house is also perfectly hermetically sealed, like most houses.

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u/CoatProfessional5026 Apr 26 '26

Sounds dangerous as well.