Talk:plant room

RFD discussion: April–June 2006

The following information passed a request for deletion.

This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.

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plant room

Apparently someone's sandox-free experiment. No content, and the only definition I can think of would be merely a sum of the parts. --EncycloPetey 08:51, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Note: "Sum of it's parts" is always an invalid argument for deletion. Confer: the Pawley list. --Connel MacKenzie T C 05:25, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

The Pawley list supports my reasoning. Please nnote that I didn't simply say "sum of it's parts" [sic], but that there was no definition that I could think of except that which was merely the sum of its parts. If there had been idiomatic usage, connotation, or something to its sense beyond the mere abutment of disparate words, then it would have fit one of the various Pawley list criteria. In this case, I was stating that plant room was only a sum of parts with no added meaning to recommend it for inclusion in Wiktionary. --EncycloPetey 09:45, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, but I thought that it was covered by Pawley rule #1. Where's the air-conditioner? Its in the boiler room or Its in the plant room. --Connel MacKenzie T C 20:18, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Where's the air conditioner? It's in the big red bus / the room at the end of the hall / the sixth dimension... Widsith 17:15, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Keep. Seems idiomatic to me in the second sense of machine room, although maybe that's just because I didn't know a plant could be "apparatus or machinery" as opposed to the entire facility. Davilla 20:00, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Keep. — Hippietrail 20:59, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Weak delete. I've never heard this term, the citation is unconvincing, the google hits I've looked at are unconvincing (though there are a lot of them, thus the "weak" in front of my "delete"), and, finally, I note that we don't even have machine room yet! —Scs 04:35, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Your ignorance of the term is a reason to keep it. --Connel MacKenzie T C 05:03, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

To clarify Connel's logic, the meaning "machine room" is not obvious to you from the components "plant" + "room", so this appears to be a term which requires explanation. If you aren't convinced that it actually means "machine room" you should list it on "requests for verification" first, before requesting deletion on those grounds. Kappa 05:48, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

(To clarify my complaints, yes, it was verification I was questioning, though not about what it meant, but whether it was a live term at all. –Scs 13:11, 27 May 2006 (UTC))

This is the standard word used in the British building industry for any room housing mechanical plant, except for lift machine rooms (or pump rooms if hydraulic) and usually boiler rooms. Keep --Enginear 20:12, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Aha. So BrE plant room = AmE machine room. Thanks; that's what I wanted to hear. –Scs 13:11, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not an expert on American engineering terminology, and know very little of popular usage there. However, at least for the technical sense, I don't think you're quite right. Certainly machine room is standard US technical usage for a (UK) lift motor room (and growing use in UK too, both because US lift manufacturers dominate, and because the motor is just one part of the machine in there). But I doubt if machine room is ever used for rooms with few or no moving parts, eg calorifier rooms, which are important plant rooms in both UK & US.

I have just done an electronic search through about 20 of the chapters (about half) of the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers' Handbook 2004: HVAC Systems and equipment (on a subscription only site unfortunately, but you might be able to find one elsewhere) and the outcome surprised me. Most of the chapters mentioned neither plant room nor machine room (I assume because they used more specific terms). Chapter 4 (Central Cooling and Heating) mentioned a central plant room twice (both on p 5, and definitely referring to a room where air con compressors, boilers, etc would be). But it never mentioned machine room at all.

Conversely, Contractor School Online (also US, at [[1]]) defined machine room as Area where commercial and industrial refrigeration machinery, except the evaporators, is located [and elsewhere referred to a lift machine room]. ASHRAE is probably the most knowledgable professional institution in the world for this subject, so I would prefer their usage over that of CSO. If no one has access to a US expert, I'll add a machine room entry in a few days time, and tart up the plant room one to correlate. Someone else can then add the popular usage. --Enginear 00:28, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Certainly machine room, like plant room, is a somewhat generic term, often overridden by a more specific room. And I'm not too surprised that a formal document like the ASHRAE Handbook might not deign to use the term, but that a more prosaic document like CSO would. (Thanks much for that research, though.)

I'm an American, and machine room is certainly the common term (in the circles I travel in) for an off-limits room in a big building with a bunch of machinery in it. I'd never thought about it, but I guess the machinery is almost always HVAC machinery. The room with the elevator machinery in it is usually called the elevator machine room, although it might be called "machine room" for short.

I was planning on adding machine room today anyway; it also occurred to me to check for engine room, which I see we already have. (But I'll toss out my opinion that, for now at least, we probably don't need lift machine room or elevator machine room.)

Thanks, I agree. --Enginear 17:24, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

What is a calorifier room? Ah: googling for "calorifier" suggests it's a water heater or boiler, so I guess a calorifier room is a boiler room (which I see we also have).

Calorifier is a term I have on my to do list. It is neither a boiler nor a hot water heater but is (roughly) a large heat exchanger taking heat from either steam or a liquid (usually water) to heat other, lower temperature, water (unlike a boiler, which takes heat from hot gases other than steam). The delay in entering calorifier is because I am finding it hard to give a simple explanation of when a liquid>liquid heat exchanger is NOT referred to as a calorifier (eg a domestic indirect hot water cylinder (rare in US but common in UK), a H-E used with a wet (US hydronic) solar heating system, a water cooled chiller, etc). --Enginear 17:24, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

–Scs 12:39, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Keep. --Connel MacKenzie T C 05:03, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Keep. I withdraw all my previous arguments. –Scs 15:28, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

removed rfd tag Andrew massyn 18:32, 10 June 2006 (UTC)