Pests like squirrels can do a lot of damage to your homes energy efficiency. This can lead to overall higher temperatures during summer and lower ones during winter. The main problem here is if racoons or squirrels make holes in your attic or other critical areas of your home. This leads to a lot of energy escaping your home through the holes in these attics, which is definitely not good. A good article on a website advocating humane squirrel removal marietta services recommends that all hole should be patched up as soon as possible in order to avoid such disasters.
Not only should you put wire around the holes (steel) in order to prevent them from coming back in, but you should also replace all siding and insulation in the areas so that your home will not leak energy from these areas. This is an interesting concept as you can definitely have much more difficulties cooling your home (and thus your tech like computers) if you are wasting so much due to inefficiencies caused by pests in your attic. You should examine your home both inside and out to see if you have these problems. One thing that I learned from the article that I mentioned was that there are definitely signs other than just noticing that your a/c bills are starting to rise. Above all else, you will begin noticing scratching during the night, bumps are also common. Odors or fur in the ventillation of the house can be a sign of advanced infestation and should be looked at immediately. These animals can also cut right through wiring like cat5 cables in seconds, which could be disasterous for network tech in your house. Be vigilent and you should be able to avoid such problems and hopefully continue to keep your tech running as cold as possible! Many people worry too much about the temperatures of their components. The thermal limits that some of these components can endure before failing is quite extreme. Heck, check out the specifications provided by your manufacturer if you are in doubt.
Here is a good post about the subject. You are basically safe so long as you don't put your components in a wool bag or something. I have seen graphics cards, for example, comfortably operating under load at over 80 degrees C. That is an insane amount when you actually think about it, but this is what they were designed for. The same goes for CPUs. Still, don't become too happy though, because heat will cause your component's lifespan to deteriorate, so it is wise to invest in good component cooling, whether this be case fans or cool water cooling setups (they even offer all-in-one units for sale now). I personally water cool all of my components because that is how I get the most cost for performance efficiency, but it is ultimately up to you and your budget. I recently purchased a house with the help of this website. One of the primary things I was looking for were pictures of the interior, and in particular, of basements and attics. I wanted to make sure that the insulation was done right.
A lot of people always talk about a home being energy efficient, but doesn't just stop at nice appliances or having some caulk around your windows (this is bad btw, but I won't go into that right now). The vast majority of the problems that you are going to have with temperature, whether during summer or winter, is going to be related to your insulation. If there are holes all throughout the attic the size of where a squirrel could get through, then this is really bad (I saw a few homes like this). You instead wan't professionally-installed insulation that is done by people who actually know what they are doing. Trust me, if you are looking to save some money in the long run, then definitely invest in some real estate that has this insulation done right, because you will be burning dollars if you don't take heed! Many people seem to believe that cooling your components, whether that be with air or with water, will somehow decrease the overall temperature of the rest of the environment around you. This isn't how heat works. If there is heat being produced, and you are moving it somewhere else (i.e out of your case and into your room), then sure, your components will report lower temperatures, but the overall ambient temperature where you've just dumped all of that heat will increase.
So, what can you do? Well, remove the heat somewhere else. If you have some time and money, you can always put a hole in your wall and have the heat vent out there. Simply create a custom water cooling loop or something similar to what is found in AC units and remove that horrible heat outside of your room and into the environment outside. No matter what though, the heat has to go somewhere. I personally have it going into a spare room that I don't use. It may heat up the room 2-3 degrees, but it doesn't matter as the heat doesn't usually spread to any other areas of the house and the room cools down at night. |