Temporary fan coil units maintained server room cooling throughout the hospital’s planned chilled-water shutdown.
Project Overview
- Location: Melbourne, Victoria
- Industry: Healthcare / Critical Infrastructure
- Application: Temporary server room cooling
- Project Type: Planned chilled water shutdown
- Cooling Capacity Required: 130 kW
- Shutdown Duration: 18 hours
- Project Duration: One weekend
- Installation Window: One day
Equipment Supplied
- 6 x 25 kW temporary vertical fan coil units
- 1 x 60 kW temporary air-cooled heat pump chiller
- 1 x 80 kW temporary air-cooled heat pump chiller
- 2 x temporary diesel-powered generators
- Flexible chilled water hoses
- Condensate pumps
- Hose protection and insulation
- Ancillary power and connection equipment
The challenge
Six chilled water CRAC units normally cooled the server room, backed up by three DX wall-mounted split systems added over the years. None of the CRAC units could run once the chilled water system went offline for the shutdown, so the room needed a standalone cooling system that did not depend on it.
The site itself made this harder than a straightforward equipment changeover. The server room sat on level three of a five-level car park, and every piece of equipment had to move through a car park that stayed open and busy seven days a week. Site power was not enough to run the temporary HVAC equipment either, which meant generators had to be part of the package from the start.
Getting hoses through the doorway into the server room raised a security issue that the hospital took seriously. Their solution was to post security at that doorway around the clock for four days, covering the full installation, operation and removal. Water was the other major risk. The room had no available internal floor drains, so any water reaching the floor was a real risk to the equipment inside.
Why Portable Air Conditioners Were Not Suitable
Portable units came up early in the conversation and were ruled out quickly. Reaching 130 kW with portable air conditioners would have meant packing enough units into the room to take up valuable working space and create trip hazards from ducting and power leads.
Portable units also need somewhere to reject heat. With restricted access and no suitable air path into the room, they would have struggled to operate efficiently throughout the shutdown.
A chilled water solution solved this by keeping the main cooling equipment out of the room. Chilled water was pumped in, and the fan coil units inside the server room recirculated and cooled the air.
The Temporary Server Room Cooling Solution
Three site inspections went into the design before anything was finalised. Each inspection involved the mechanical contractor, the hospital’s own team and the Aircon Rentals project team.
Heat load, access, available space and the power situation all fed into the final layout: air-cooled chillers, vertical fan coil units and diesel generators working together.
A temporary chilled-water vessel formed part of the cooling circuit supplying the server room.
The chillers and generators were positioned in adjacent car park bays, roughly 20 to 30 metres from the server room door. From there, flexible hoses carried chilled water into the room and connected to the six vertical fan coil units, which recirculated and cooled the air to keep conditions stable through the shutdown.
Two air-cooled chillers provided 130 kW of temporary cooling capacity with redundancy built into the system.
Redundancy sat at the centre of the design. Running two chillers and two generators meant the hospital was never relying on a single point of failure. In a worst-case scenario, they would still have had at least half their cooling capacity available.
Managing Condensation and Water Risk
With no available drains in the room, keeping water off the floor mattered as much as the cooling itself.
Aircon Rentals insulated the chilled water connections inside the room to reduce condensation risk. The flexible hoses were also wrapped in an external plastic sheath so any sweating from hoses or fittings could be caught and drained outside, rather than pooling near the equipment.
Condensate from the fan coil units was pumped out of the room the same way. Together, these measures helped protect the room and the infrastructure inside it for the full shutdown.
Temporary Power for the Cooling System
Existing site power could not support the temporary equipment, so two diesel generators were installed near the chillers to cover the load.
Temporary generators supplied the additional power required by the cooling system during the shutdown.
Running generators in a car park brought its own considerations. Aircon Rentals checked ventilation and diesel fume management before the shutdown began, and also reviewed noise, placement and safe access around the installation.
The fan coil units ran off single-phase outlets inside the server room, while the chillers drew power from the generators outside.
Testing Before the Shutdown
A four-hour operational test was completed ahead of the shutdown, giving the mechanical contractor and hospital team a chance to confirm the temporary system could support the room for the full 18 hours.
The outcome
The temporary system ran without a hitch for all 18 hours. The hospital and its mechanical contractor completed the chilled water works over the weekend, and the server room never lost cooling.
The server room remained operational and fully cooled for the entire 18-hour shutdown.
Aircon Rentals monitored the system and fuel usage throughout the project.
Once the main chilled water system came back online, the temporary setup was partially decommissioned on Sunday night, with the remaining equipment removed by Monday.
No downtime. No cooling failure. No disruption to the hospital’s server room operations.
Project results
- 130 kW of temporary server room cooling delivered
- Critical hospital server room stayed operational throughout the shutdown
- 18-hour planned chilled water shutdown completed on schedule
- Redundancy built into both cooling and power
- Chillers and generators housed in adjacent car park bays
- Condensate and hose sweating risks managed
- Four-hour system test completed and signed off before shutdown
- Equipment removed once the main system was back online
Why Aircon Rentals
A critical environment like this needs more than a chiller dropped on-site. It needs a plan built around the specific risks of the building: access through an active car park, no drainage, security at a doorway and zero tolerance for downtime.
Aircon Rentals worked alongside the mechanical contractor and hospital team on every one of those points, from capacity and power through to condensate management and site security.
The result was a temporary server room cooling system that held the room steady for the entire shutdown.
Need Hospital Server Room Temporary Cooling?
Aircon Rentals supplies temporary HVAC, chiller hire and generator hire for hospitals, data centres, commercial buildings and critical infrastructure sites across Australia.
Contact Aircon Rentals to discuss temporary server room cooling for a planned shutdown, cooling failure for critical equipment that cannot afford to go down.
Call 1800 626 996, available 24/7, or request a hire quote online.