Breathe

Another point which is overlooking is how everything is put together, in the yachting world this tends to be abused where space is very limited other systems are compromised.

"With shoehorning everything in you will create more heat in the rack, for every 10 degrees above 85 degrees Fahrenheit the life of the equipment is decreased by 40%."

Breathe

If yachts are like big cans and the equipment would be sardines the trend is to squeeze everything in as space is an issue on a most yachts. How many times do we hear; “we haven’t got space for that”. This is all well and good but our equipment must be serviceable, and we must be able to gain access to it. Assume every component failed you would need to gain access to it at some point. With this mentality, you won't go far wrong, and you will be better suited in the future, when you may need access to that piece of kit fast. Always mount your equipment in an are that will be accessible. Think smart before the army of carpenters boxes everything in so you cannot gain access to it again without dismantling a cupboard, wall or ceiling.

Perfect Enviroment

In a perfect world, we recommend that a sealed air conditioned rack is supplied or a rack in an AC controlled environment. A yacht is far from the ideal conditions for AV/IT equipment. You generally won't be able to keep this equipment in the perfect conditions. Depending on where you are in the world the humidity will change, and therefore you must also watch out for condensation in your AV racks, be sure to keep a close eye, and remember to regularly check on your AV racks.

Service Loops

We also recommend a service loop on of the equipment so you can pull out and check on the equipment out of the rack while it is still connected. I guess most of us have been there when we need to remove a component and you end up pulling all the cables off just to look at the back of the equipment. We like the in-room AV swivel rack (MA SRSR) from middle Atlantic, it is proven to be a success on many yachts, that is if you have an average size cupboard to fit it in or failing that we do like installing the rack equipment on the back of the TV. Usually we make a ply board and mount it to the back of the TV with a lockable swiveling bracket, this is extremely helpful when installing the AV gear and also fault finding. One of our favourites is the networked PDU with temperature and humidity sensing. These allow you to remotely log onto the power strip and reboot a particular device. As an ETO, I can’t stress enough how great these are. Depending on the owner/guests I believe we as ETO’s are supposed to be like ghosts, if the guest sees the ETO something has gone wrong. Would you like to see the TV guy in your hotel room with a screwdriver in his hand?

Good Practices

A good practice is to leave a 1 U gap above the server and UPS. Playstations turn into mini heaters when running for hours. It is a good idea to switch these off when they are not in use. We recommend Stacking the heaviest equipment at the bottom of the rack; this sounds obvious but it’s not always implemented. In most racks, we recommend not stacking all of the equipment on top of each other. If there is a 1U space in your rack, then fit a row of small rack fans in that slot.

Air Movement

Air movement isn’t really looked into too much when installing equipment. If you don’ t have the luxury of an AC supplied sealed cabinet then best way to cool down your equipment in a sealed rack without AC is by using negative air pressure. This is extracting more air than air being supplied to the cabinet. In this scenario, the air will be sucked in through the vent at the bottom and extracted out through the fan at the top, A lot of companies fits the vent and the fan the opposite way round to this or they blow air into the cabinet rather than extracting the air. Check this video link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jitCQtP4npY. This is much more effective at moving air through an enclosed space. Therefore we recommend installing a filtered (to protect from dust particles) vent lower down in your rack and an exhaust fan out of the top or on the side close to the top on the opposite side. This is so effective you can even run your fans at half speed (if noise is an issue) and the air circulation will still surpass blowing air into the rack.