Cooler
Cooler
An electrical device that fits into a wall and pushes cold air into a room. Its exhaust port generates a lot of heat. Can be used to cool down rooms during the summer months, or to create a walk-in freezer.
Base Stats
- Type
- Temperature
- HP
- 100
Building
- Size
- 1
- Placeable
- Y
- Power
- -200 W
The cooler is a device that can be used to lower the temperature in a room. This effect can maintain happy colonists during high outdoor temperatures and prevent the spoilage of food.
Freezers
By setting the thermostat of a cooler to maintain a room temperature below freezing (0ºC / 32ºF), you can create a "walk-in freezer". Perishable items stored in this room become frozen and no longer susceptible to spoilage. In many warmer biomes, spoilage is a major obstacle in maintaining a food supply, and thus freezer construction is generally considered a high priority.
Performance
Coolers use power to pump heat out of a room. If the areas surrounding that room are hotter than the current temperature inside the room, heat penetrates back into the room. As a result, the overall area of the room as well as the number of wall units affects how easy or difficult it is to cool a room. Also, a single cooler has a maximum efficiency and may not be able to reach the target temperature of its thermostat. In these situations, building multiple coolers is helpful, but consumes more power. As of Alpha9, a cooler that is actively cooling a room will consume 200W regardless of the thermostat setting. Once the goal temperature is reached, the cooler can transition to low power state where it only uses 20W. However, if the exterior of the room is warmer, the instant the goal temperature is reached, heat penetrates the room, the cooler senses this and returns to the high power state (there is a time buffer to this effect to avoid a flickering between high and low power states).
Simple playtesting reveals that with an exterior temperature of 80-100°F (27-38°C), a single cooler can cool a room with a 10x10 exterior to a minimum temperature of 50-60ºF (10-16°C). Under these conditions, 2-3 coolers were required to maintain a constant (frozen) 30-31°F (0- Negative 1°C) within the same space. Further testing (or evaluation of the source code) could be used to determine an exact formula for cooler performance and temperature gradient speeds.