Ok, so when our school theatre was built, the electrician thought that the Scene Shop would be the PERFECT place to put our to Sensor Dimmer Racks. WRONG! They are constantly full of dust, I vacuum them out almost every day, and they run at almost 81 degrees Fahrenheit all the time. It's becoming a problem, lights are jumping, major issues overall. I can't seem to think of a solution. Anybody know anything?
Dimmers in the scene shop??
- Thread starterbull
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You could build an enclosure around the dimmer racks to local building codes that has independent ventilation from the workshop. Draw in clean air from somewhere other than the workshop and exhaust the enclosure into the workshop. If you maintain positive air pressure within the enclosure then the dust from the workshop cannot be drawn into the dimmers.
Yea, now I just need to find codes, and I have to make the dimmers accessible, so I am going to have to find a way to make an almost "air-tight" door. And, I don't know that having the ventilation system pull air from another location can happen, that would require filing a work order to the county office, and that would never happen, so I'm going to have to come up with a high filtration system to attach to one of those portable air conditioners.
would some sort of shop air filter unit help?Grizzly.com -- Product Categories
That's exactly what you should NOT do. You neither need nor want it to be air tight. You want the air pressure inside the enclosure to be higher than the air pressure outside, and the only effective way to do that within your shop is to draw the air from somewhere else.
Filtration of your shop air just moves the problem from the dimmer rack to the filter system. A clogged filter means the air pressure around the rack drops, the rack starts drawing directly from the shop, and you get to clean both the filter system and the rack.
The problem is venthilation. Long ago when I was young and dumb I was a High School teacher. The dimmer rack was 2 feet from the edge of the stage and noise was a constant problem during performances. I tried building a tight box around it to deaden the sound. This shot rack temperature through the roof causing all kinds of weird problems and we had to take it out immediately.
No matter how you do this it's going to require: permits, work orders, and money for an expensive air ventilation system. You could build an airtight box or a positive air ventilation system in a non-airtight box. Either way is going to be expensive.
No matter how you do this it's going to require: permits, work orders, and money for an expensive air ventilation system. You could build an airtight box or a positive air ventilation system in a non-airtight box. Either way is going to be expensive.
What's on the other side of the wall that the dimmers are currently against? Maybe you could move them there and reroute the electrical, assuming there's enough slack in the cabinet to make that possible. You might have to elevate the dimmers to make up for the loss of slack.
An 8 inch thick concrete wall. All the cables are fed through a pipe, which goes through the wall in it's own little hole about 20 feet up.
I think you missed my point, or something is really screwy. You have an 8" concrete wall on the other side of the wall? I would have thought you either had another room, or the outside of the building.
MillburyAuditorium
Active Member
Well, pretty much what the others said. If you can get it down, maybe even build a tiny little room and make it a dimmer room and you can install a good AC unit in there and keep it nice and chilly : )
As for bad placement of dimmers. Our i96 rack is right off stage right wing, it is VERY loud, we finally decided to construct an exhaust piping to revert the sound to the ceiling.
As for bad placement of dimmers. Our i96 rack is right off stage right wing, it is VERY loud, we finally decided to construct an exhaust piping to revert the sound to the ceiling.
If you can spend money, I would go to an electrical/mechanical engineering firm with the problem. The elecrical engineer will know the NEC access and fire code issues. The mechanical engineer will be able to design a proper ventilation or cooling system.
Left to an HVAC contractor to design, it has maybe a 50/50 chance of working right. They usually underestimate the heat load produced by the electronics, unless you can give them accurate BTU specs from the dimmer manufacturer.
Left to an HVAC contractor to design, it has maybe a 50/50 chance of working right. They usually underestimate the heat load produced by the electronics, unless you can give them accurate BTU specs from the dimmer manufacturer.
Haha, I wish... i'll just keep bringin the air compressor in every week, it's no big... this is the second time our school system has managed to mess up dimmer placement. The first time was the middle school they just built, this time the dimmers are in their own, un airconditioned room... therefore they were constantly runnning at like 85 degrees... they finally put air conditioning in there, but they also installed four movers (ETC S4 Revs.) and wired them wrong, so when you tilt, channele 22 and 26 turn on also, it is kinda amusing actually. Ha. Thanks for the suggestions guys.
coldnorth57
Active Member
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