Two more replies, yippee! But before that, I have been presented with a new idea, one that I've spent some time thinking about and researching.
British Columbia is home to over 3000 mines, ~600 of which are on Vancouver Island and of those, ~300 are underground. I've retrieved an outdated spreadsheet from the provincial government reporting on all of this, but most importantly it also lists Mine names, ore types, and their locations!
So here's an idea presented to me by a friend, what if I refurbished the entrance section of an abandoned mine? Well here are some of my thoughts:
They're quite wet, even with "designed drainage". Not to mention, that drainage is often towards the entrance for horizontal mines as they dig up usually...It would be a LOT of work, but there is a very very small chance that it wouldn't be as much work as digging a new hole!Almost guaranteed to be far from anywhere my fiance would like to live, so it would be off of my property...Mines that are "abandoned" and have a low sale price are likely to be very hazardous.There is potential for multiple businesses... E.g. mushroom farming in a branch or simply further into the mine.The environmentalist in me likes the idea of using a company (even my own) as a means for some rememdiation of a polluted area. If there is a suitable mine available, I would definitely factor in tailing remediation via systems such as an artificial biological blackwater filtration system and the removal of old and dangerous equipment (think: old unstable dynamite and rusting minecarts).Unlikely to be within city limits... No building permits required!
Carl:
1. Extra structures cause shading, require me to mount the roof in order to service the panels, and require racking for the structure (more difficult than DIY racking on the ground).
2. Ok northern property line or up hill, I fear the fiance may dislike these additional buildings even with a good coat of paint.
3. Oh now you're digging into the good stuff. Importantly, where I live, winter is much cloudier than summer, when there is basically blue sky for three months straight (except the forest fire smoke caused by the three months of what is essentially a summer drought every year). So yes, my solar production capacity will be reduced, but I don't see the ground becoming "warmer" during winter, our winters are mild in any case. Your point about ground temperature saturation is valid, but that doesn't mean the saturation point will be the ambient temperature of the room. The ground is essentially a massive heat sink, and Vancouver Island in particular has some of the heaviest rain, and the best drainage. Maybe the right thing to do then, is put the servers in a hillslope so that water is draining over and past them underground, and to add gravel around them to promote that drainage. Alternatively, as Hans is suggesting further below, perhaps simply plumb empty pipes out of the hot-aisle (server exhaust facing) walls at ceiling height, plumb it a few meters away from the underground structure, and then loop it to the cool-aisle (inlet facing) walls at floor height. No fans required. So long as the air is able to be passively cooled in the pipe, air will flow. (Otherwise it will stagnate or worse it will create a positive feedback loop.
4. For an underground structure? Also isn't marine paint somewhat toxic?
5. Ah yes, but those shipping container datacenters are on truckbeds, being hauled around. No permit required for them... My only addition to your note about seismic structuring would actually be to increase motion/bending, instead of increasing rigidity as that can cause the machines inside to topple instead or worse, if one of the piles decides to break, the entire structure could tear. Excellent resource for understanding earthquake proofing quickly:
https://www.bigrentz.com/blog/earthquake-proof-buildings and on the topic of using flexible materials for earthquake proofing:
https://www.constructionexec.com/article/engineering-better-wood-structures-for-earthquakes-past-experiences-and-future-trends
Hans:
1. Thank you for those videos Hans!
2. For moisture inside of the datacentre, I would likely rely on either a rackmount AC or a dehumidifier that operates only when necessary to reduce humidity to below 70%. Getting rid of the collected water would be another issue, I don't know what is the best solution for emergency draining, a drain into gravel? That would require some careful planning to avoid underground water saturation from flooding the datacentre.
In addition to heat output of the machines, each machine has a set of static pressure fans, which if positioned correctly, could push air through pipes that leave the container from the "hot-aisle" and return at the foot of the "cool-aisle".
3. Do you have recommendations for such a membrane?
4. I'm not opposed to it either being burried in mostly gravel on a slope, or burried on a slope with a retaining wall and gravel on the retaining wall side of the structure. I like the retaining wall idea because then I can utilize even more flat surfaces on an otherwise steep slope. I'm not certain that this will have a positive effect on waterflow on the property however, because water that runs quickly is often better at eroding than water that is forced to move slowly through soils and vegetation. On the other hand, most of Vancouver Island is again mostly stone and drains exceptionally well, given how much rain we receive.
5. Although Aircrete appears to be an interesting material, my brief search online lead me to understand that it is not very water resistant or environmentally friendly other than utilizing less concrete per volume because of the air bubbles. What are your thoughts?
Thanks Carl & Hans for your replies!
Triston
Maybe the simplest idea of simply submerging shipping containers is the best solution, not because it creates demand for unsustainable materials, but because it uses an oversupply of shipping containers in North America (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1JlYZQG3lI) Worth noting that I am somewhat opposed to the shipping container idea due to rust/metals leaching into the ground, but I do like the idea of using surplusses of material or objects that have no better use case (such as shipping containers right now).