Keeping a sleet wheat farm cold?

[Soylent]

What’s a good way to keep them cold enough? I’ve tried cold biomes, wheezeworts, and even pumping -20 hydrogen gas around them with radiant piping, but they keep drifting up in temperature. I’m thinking it’s probably caused by the irrigation water temperature, but I’m not sure how to get the water cold enough without freezing.

[Lacost]

You need to insulate your farm. Build at least 2 layers of insulated tiles around it or have vacuum envelope your farm. You can use water airlocks to make the farm accesible.

Cool down your water to 0°C, use temp shift plates out of ice to cool down the farm to <5°C (you have to mop up the molten water). If your dirt is too hot then use all of your dirt to construct temp shift plates in the ice biome until they reach very low temperatures. Deconstruct them and order the dirt to be stored away in the farm.

The cooling from the water should then be enough to prevent heat creep from automations and your farm should run indefinitely (until you run out of dirt).

[Neotuck]

This is an older pic from a previous version of the game but still works for sleet wheat

It's a simple cooling setup that uses mech doors to turn on/off the wheezie warts controlled by thermal sensors

The irrigated water comes in at 14C average

[BaloneyOs]

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it a waste to cool down the water since it's going to be consumed? AFAIK in this game matter doesn't transfer heat when consumed, and water is very expensive to cool down. If that's the case then wouldn't it be better to insulate the piping and just focus all the cooling on the environment instead?

[Neotuck]

1 minute ago, BaloneyOs said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it a waste to cool down the water since it's going to be consumed? AFAIK in this game matter doesn't transfer heat when consumed, and water is very expensive to cool down. If that's the case then wouldn't it be better to insulate the piping and just focus all the cooling on the environment instead?

you are not wrong, but that's not what's happening

hydroponic farm tiles also hold a packet of water while the sleet wheat consumes it.  During this time the farm tile is absorbing heat from the water which in turn warms the sleet wheat and any other neighboring tiles

given that hydroponic farm tiles are made out of metal ore, they absorb and transfer heat quickly

[BaloneyOs]

1 minute ago, Neotuck said:

you are not wrong, but that's not what's happening

hydroponic farm tiles also hold a packet of water while the sleet wheat consumes it.  During this time the farm tile is absorbing heat from the water which in turn warms the sleet wheat and any other neighboring tiles

Whoopsie, I completely forgot about the farm tile water storage! 

Even with that, I still feel like it would cost less energy to just cool the environment than to also pre-cool the water. With flow control you can force the tiles to store less water at a time, so a larger percentage of the stored water would be used before having a chance to heat up its surroundings. In theory it should be much cheaper to negate the residual heat from this method than needing an additional setup to cool water, but this still depends on how things are already/planned to be set up for OP anyways.

TBF I don't know if a marginal advantage like this would help OP's case though since it feels as if we don't have complete information as to why OP is experiencing temperature drifts in the situations being described.

[Neotuck]

1 minute ago, BaloneyOs said:

I still feel like it would cost less energy to just cool the environment than to also pre-cool the water.

I do that with the picture I posted in my first reply, 

10 minutes ago, BaloneyOs said:

With flow control you can force the tiles to store less water at a time, so a larger percentage of the stored water would be used before having a chance to heat up its surroundings.

That would be difficult.  Sleet Wheat consumes 20kg of water per cycle.  Divide that by 600 seconds in a cycle that's 33.333333333 grams per second and there is no way to set a flow valve to one third gram without rounding up or down.

If you round down there will be periods of time that sleet wheat will stifle due to lack of irrigation

If you round up the farm tile will slowly fill up with water making the effort pointless

[BaloneyOs]

27 minutes ago, Neotuck said:

I do that with the picture I posted in my first reply, 

Neat, thanks for confirming.

Rounding down wouldn't be as much of an issue if farms didn't also consume secondary resources while stifled, but the downtime would still be miniscule at least. Guess we gotta plant sleet wheat in multiples of 3 now lol.

[Neotuck]

1 minute ago, BaloneyOs said:

Guess we gotta plant sleet wheat in multiples of 3 now lol.

luckily my farms holds 60 so that works lol

[Lancar]

If you don't mind paying some energy to get it done, build a line of metal tiles (gold, for example) directly underneath the hydroponic tiles and use radiant pipes with petroleum flowing through it. Cool the petroleum with an aquatuner with a gate and thermal sensor set to cool only until -20 or so. You can recycle the heat it produces either into steam for power production and/or heat to keep the Pincha peppers warm (if needed).

This is very simple to set up and can cool even badly insulated farms.

You can also use polluted water as a coolant at a -10 limit, but i've found it's more error prone due to sometimes the occasional Pwater packet gets cooled below that and breaks the piping. Petroleum gives more leeway.

[hackcasual]

Another thing to keep in mind is sleet wheat tiles also store dirt. I've found in late game farm operation, my farms start to stifle, because the dirt sources are hotter (mined cooked slime for example). Another reason to automate your farms, as you can have your dirt delivery supply run through a cooling cistern.

[chemie]

On 6/8/2019 at 4:04 PM, BaloneyOs said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't it a waste to cool down the water since it's going to be consumed? AFAIK in this game matter doesn't transfer heat when consumed, and water is very expensive to cool down. If that's the case then wouldn't it be better to insulate the piping and just focus all the cooling on the environment instead?

use planters and you can feed them 95c water without any heating at all.  it makes keeping things cool trivial in an ice biome and some DUP labor

[Soylent]

On 6/8/2019 at 3:57 PM, Neotuck said:

This is an older pic from a previous version of the game but still works for sleet wheat

It's a simple cooling setup that uses mech doors to turn on/off the wheezie warts controlled by thermal sensors

The irrigated water comes in at 14C average

That is a ridiculous amount of weezeworts... 

3 hours ago, hackcasual said:

Another thing to keep in mind is sleet wheat tiles also store dirt. I've found in late game farm operation, my farms start to stifle, because the dirt sources are hotter (mined cooked slime for example). Another reason to automate your farms, as you can have your dirt delivery supply run through a cooling cistern.

I completely forgot about the dirt! That stuff comes in pretty hot from composters and takes a whole to cool off 

[Neotuck]

2 minutes ago, Soylent said:

That is a ridiculous amount of weezeworts... 

I would hardly call 32 "ridiculous" you can find that amount on an average map.  You can find more on ice planets or get lucky with the printing pod

[bobucles]

Spending an entire map worth of wheezeworts on two farm stations can usually be considered excessive. 

I saw a very nice setup in a video. Wheezeworts were placed in pots next to the farm tiles and the pits were filled with water. When the water freezes, the wheezeworts turn off. This way they get the area just cold enough without pushing it over for the rest of your stuff.

[Neotuck]

3 minutes ago, bobucles said:

Spending an entire map worth of wheezeworts on two farm stations can usually be considered excessive.

depends on play style I guess, they are not limited so there is no waste

4 minutes ago, bobucles said:

I saw a very nice setup in a video. Wheezeworts were placed in pots next to the farm tiles and the pits were filled with water. When the water freezes, the wheezeworts turn off. This way they get the area just cold enough without pushing it over for the rest of your stuff.

interesting, I'll try that

[ChickenMadness]

if you have a slush geyser you can fill it with gulp fish and use the water from that. you'll have to transport the ice into a separate tank to melt back into water first though.

I usually play on maps with a lot of slush geysers because I like moving ice around on conveyor belts to cool stuff down and make new cold water reservoirs. (screenshot is from quite a few game versions ago).

[Lacost]

13 hours ago, bobucles said:

Spending an entire map worth of wheezeworts on two farm stations can usually be considered excessive.

Since the steam turbine is so easy to set up, cooling has become far easier than for previous builds. Thus, Wheezeworts are far less valuable in my opinion since everything that needs proper cooling is better off with an aquatuner anyways. Spending all of your Wheezeworts on a single sleet wheat farm is no longer a waste of the "free" cooling anymore.

[Zarylo]

I cool water using aquatuners down to -1.5° C on average, and pump that to the farms. That keeps them cold. Nowadays I don't even use insulation anymore since the farms help cool my base that way. 

I don't have any good pictures right now but here are detailed construction instructions:

1. fill a liquid reservoir to the brim with water

2. connect reservoir exit to aquatuner. (Cool it by any means)

3. connect aquatuner exit first to a temp sensor (set: below -1° C, higher for more leeway), the input of a liquid shutoff immediately thereafter and lastly the entry of a liquid bridge.

4. connect exit of liquid shutoff to your farms, make sure it's pipe is never blocked by adequate buffering of your own choosing.

5. connect a water source of your own choosing (minimal input temperature: 13° C) to first the exit of the liquid bridge (mentioned in step 3) then to the entrance of the reservoir (mentioned in step 1&2)

This setup provides a steady source of ice water. Quantity depends on input temperature. (In theory 10kg/s at 13° C, 5kg/s at 27° C, 2.5kg/2 at 65° C input temperature respectively)

to shut down the setup disable the aquatuner, everything else will settle down with it.

the setup is foolproof if you are mindful of the following:

• allowing water below 13° C temperature to enter from your source or pipes will break. (stray packages are fine with enough leeway)
• failing to drain the exit of the liquid shutoff will cause pipes to break. (within about 5 seconds)
• failing to supply water will cause the reservoir to loose contained water, which impairs its ability to stabilize the water temperature. Allowing water to suddenly enter again which isn't properly stabilized may cause pipes to break (depending on leeway and remaining water.
• to fill up the reservoir (should it ever loose water) the aquatuner must be disabled to allow resupply.

[Nightinggale]

Reading this thread makes me wonder if there isn't a more simple approach. How about doing something like this:

1. Make a room and fill it with polluted water
2. add a pump and make it trigger on water higher than 2 C
3. make pump output go through an aquatuner and then back into the tank
4. Try to even out the temperature with thermal shift plates, radiant gas pipes with hydrogen or similar
5. add radiant liquid pipes with as many pipes as possible under water

The pumps should try to maintain 2 C water and the temperature should be fairly stable due to the large mass. Now let clean water through the radiant pipe. If you want to play it safe, on the exit, if it's too hot, let to go back and go through again. This should ensure that water can become 2-3 C without the risk of reaching 0 C.

[Zarylo]

12 hours ago, Nightinggale said:

Reading this thread makes me wonder if there isn't a more simple approach. How about doing something like this:

1. Make a room and fill it with polluted water
2. add a pump and make it trigger on water higher than 2 C
3. make pump output go through an aquatuner and then back into the tank
4. Try to even out the temperature with thermal shift plates, radiant gas pipes with hydrogen or similar
5. add radiant liquid pipes with as many pipes as possible under water

The pumps should try to maintain 2 C water and the temperature should be fairly stable due to the large mass. Now let clean water through the radiant pipe. If you want to play it safe, on the exit, if it's too hot, let to go back and go through again. This should ensure that water can become 2-3 C without the risk of reaching 0 C.

your approach is simpler in the sense that it requires less mechanical prowess. But it also requires a ton of space, materials (most notably: refined metal for radiant pipes) and a huge amount of polluted water. Those drawbacks may just be what makes it infeasible for the early game where food production is a main concern.

If I may make some suggestions: use clean water in your room instead, pump cold supercoolant (between say -100° C and 0° C) through the radiant pipes and aquatuners (closed circuit with an overflow loop, to unblock the aquatuner if disabled)

Then simply pump the cold ambient water for your farms.

this requires a lot less materials (no thermal shift plates, radiant pipes are only optional) and supercoolant makes thermal management a no fuss issue. Supercoolant is available if you gain access to fullerene which often is in 10km rocket range.

Alternative: You can also use petroleum instead of supercoolant but it will be less efficient (around 4 times less) and you have to be vary of the freezing point (somewhere around -55° C if memory serves). Additionally radiant pipes are non-optional.

[Nightinggale]

1 hour ago, Zarylo said:

If I may make some suggestions: use clean water in your room instead, pump cold supercoolant (between say -100° C and 0° C) through the radiant pipes and aquatuners (closed circuit with an overflow loop, to unblock the aquatuner if disabled)

Part of the trick is to not get sub 0 C temperatures as stalled water might freeze. Super coolant is always better, but I generally design without relying on space materials if possible because a lot of the base is already built when you get to the first rocket. I can certainly come up with something better if all techs are available. Even more if I use mods (my own mods would be enough).

1 hour ago, Zarylo said:

your approach is simpler in the sense that it requires less mechanical prowess. But it also requires a ton of space, materials (most notably: refined metal for radiant pipes) and a huge amount of polluted water. Those drawbacks may just be what makes it infeasible for the early game where food production is a main concern.

The amount of polluted water is easily found in slime biomes. The metal part is true, but you might get away with using granite instead.

[Zarylo]

1 hour ago, Nightinggale said:

Part of the trick is to not get sub 0 C temperatures as stalled water might freeze. Super coolant is always better, but I generally design without relying on space materials if possible because a lot of the base is already built when you get to the first rocket. I can certainly come up with something better if all techs are available. Even more if I use mods (my own mods would be enough).

Which is why you don't pump water through the pool, but rather use water (instead of polluted water) in the pool and cool it directly. should water blocks freeze nothing happens as it is not inside a pipe to rupture.

This allows you to run colder material through your pipes, which removes the need for refined metals for pipes.

[Prince Mandor]

22 hours ago, Zarylo said:

your approach is simpler in the sense that it requires less mechanical prowess. But it also requires a ton of space, materials (most notably: refined metal for radiant pipes) and a huge amount of polluted water. Those drawbacks may just be what makes it infeasible for the early game where food production is a main concern.

If I may make some suggestions: use clean water in your room instead, pump cold supercoolant (between say -100° C and 0° C) through the radiant pipes and aquatuners (closed circuit with an overflow loop, to unblock the aquatuner if disabled)

Then simply pump the cold ambient water for your farms.

this requires a lot less materials (no thermal shift plates, radiant pipes are only optional) and supercoolant makes thermal management a no fuss issue. Supercoolant is available if you gain access to fullerene which often is in 10km rocket range.

Alternative: You can also use petroleum instead of supercoolant but it will be less efficient (around 4 times less) and you have to be vary of the freezing point (somewhere around -55° C if memory serves). Additionally radiant pipes are non-optional.

If you have supercoolant, how refined metal can be problem? It directly falls from the sky

[nets]

I think every solution, but what I'm going to suggest, is probably more cost effective, elegant, efficient, etc. But;

1) Create a typical two Aquatuner + Steam Turbine design
2) Sieve your polluted water coming in (so result is 40 degrees celsius)
3) Run it through the Steam Turbine room with a granite pipe, i forget how many lengths, calc it out, so it gains about 3-5 degrees.
4) Run it through the first Aquatuner (-14 degrees), second Aquatuner (-14) and out it will come at about +1-3 degrees. 

And if calcing it out is too much headache (causing too much variable) just run the granite pipe through a small water tank that you preheat to about 80 degrees celsius with the Liquid Tepedizer (one way of creating a stable heat source, also a way to kill germs in water).

Now it might cost you a bit of power, but this works too!