Thanks for all the creative ideas Guys.
I had already found the "cooling project" web site, but not the Google report; thanks for sharing, mixture, as some of it is quite interesting (and some of it quite unexpected).
I have actually looked at two beer fridges already (one Husky, branded as Stella Artois, and one of unknown manufacture) but both cooled the contents far more than I need.
Last night however a friend (whose surname isn't Shelley
) suggested wine coolers; some wines need chilling but not as much as beer typically does, so the thermostat would likely have a higher ceiling. Sure enough, the first one I found was
with 18deg C maximum. It is also the right sort of physical size internally, has low power consumption, and is quite inexpensive to buy.
The same friend (a computer hardware guy) also commented however that he thinks I am over-careful with protecting the NAS from the environment it sits in; he thinks that because I have disabled spin down (so the disks are always idling and generating some warmth) they will quite happily survive bitterly cold winters so long as they are shielded from sub-zero drafts. Because I have proven that propping up one end of the box lid is all it needs to get temperatures back inside limits on even the hottest days, his thinking is simply to leave the lid completely removed and stretch some fine denier tights over the top to keep most dust and insects out! Given that overheating only happens in the summer, there is also a wide time period in which to pop the lid back on if I am really worried about cold and damp.
I will admit that there is a simple elegance in this even though it is exactly what I discarded when installing the NAS a year ago and it is not the creative science project that I wanted!
So, I will try the tights and if necessary buy the wine cooler!
Thanks again, and I am sure I will come up with another project soon.
XV