Caged HeatWhen building a digital home, don't forget to keep all that hot new technology cool—or else.

Tim Johnson has seen some sad things in his time—custom doors warped, elegant millwork ruined, built-in cabinetry destroyed. And that's just the damage to a new home. Factor in expensive, high-performance audio/video equipment that's fried beyond repair and you understand Johnson's lament when he says of the culprit, “Not paying attention to this is a nightmare.”

The nightmare that haunts this project engineer for Engineered Environments in Alameda, Calif., is heat—more specifically, how heat from the myriad new digital technologies in homes today will escape once it's generated. “If heat is bottled up in a closed space,” Johnson says, “it will typically do damage, either to the equipment or to the home.”

Talk to your business's IT group. Those people know heat. Rooms that hold the company servers are kept cool lest the systems overheat and break down. High-end digital homes have similar rooms, with racks of receivers or networking gear, for instance. Many production homes include purpose-built closets or cabinets for hiding the technology that today's home buyer wants.

If not properly ventilated, however, these design touches won't be worth the materials they're built with. “It's something you need to be planning for very early on,” Johnson says.

The challenge is usually less about science and more about making choices during design and construction. Frank Federman, president of Valencia, Calif.–based Active Thermal Management, says his company can easily help people understand how many cubic feet per minute of air should circulate around electronic equipment.

SIZZLING SYSTEMS: Which of these impressive equipment racks is properly ventilated? Basic planning can ensure all are.

“The problem comes when an architect or designer asks, ‘You want to put a hole where?'” Federman says. “With many designers, given an assignment, thermal considerations are not foremost in their minds. Can't say I blame them.”

But the pros of ventilation far outweigh the cons. Federman says in addition to aesthetics-first designers, his company works with several installers who simply refuse to put in a system unless all parties agree to address ventilation and cooling issues. After all, the home buyer is going to call someone (the builder? the installer?) when his new equipment overheats and malfunctions. Doing the job right up-front can pay off down the line.

“Any ventilation—even imperfect ventilation—is better than none,” says Federman.

When it comes to building a digital home, Federman and Johnson agree that a few leading questions will help everyone arrive at a finished product that's cool—in more ways than one.

Like other things in life, the first step to addressing ventilation and cooling is to admit you have a heating problem. “People used to have turntables and amplifiers and were willing to leave them out on tables,” says Federman. “Now they don't want to look at their equipment. But they were designed to operate on a table-top, two feet off the ground, in 70-degree conditions, with unlimited ventilation.”

VCRs, DVD players, and other equipment give off little heat. But more often they're sitting next to other electronics, such as TiVo boxes, that raise the temperature appreciably. And some products are just hotter than others. Plasma TVs, for instance, give off more heat than LCDs, so that should factor into planning.

Then there are the digital theater systems, media servers, and various headends for cable, satellite, and fiber optics. All these systems can produce damaging heat, and because they're central to the digital lifestyle, home buyers will be less tolerant if they fail.