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How to Determine BTU

Buildings have both heating and cooling requirements for the comfort levels of employees or occupants. Some facilities do not have human occupants but still require proper cooling for the operation of the systems contained in the facility. Computer and telecommunication companies have rooms dedicated to housing the systems that control the connections with the Internet and telephone lines. To cool these rooms to the recommended operating temperature, you must know the BTU output of all the equipment in the room.

Instructions

- 1
  Take an inventory of each piece of equipment housed in the room. Record the voltage and rating of each piece. The required information is located on a tag near the power supply of each unit. This information is also available in the product documentation of the piece of equipment.
- 2
  Determine the wattage of each product by multiplying the voltage by the current. The current rating of the equipment is its maximum rating. For example, a piece of equipment that operates at 120V with a current rating of 3 amps has a wattage of W = volts * amps = 120 * 3 = 360 W.
- 3
  Sum the wattages of all the equipment on the inventory list. The sum represents the total number of watts given off by the equipment during an hour of operation. The cooling solution must compensate for this amount of heat generation.
- 4
  Convert the wattage of the room to BTU per hour by multiplying the wattage by 3.413. Using the example given, to determine the number of BTU/hr for a room that only contains the one single piece of equipment, multiply 360 W by 3.413 to yield 1228.7 BTU/hour.

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