Equipment in loft - dust and heat issues?

["dermot_bradley" <bradley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hey folks

I moved house a few months ago (just after finishing wiring on my last
place doh!) and am trying to plan stuff out in the new house (3 years
old but new to me). Unlike the previous place there's nowhere under
the stairs to put kit and cables and I think the garage is out for
various reasons.

I was just going to put the ether switch, router, CAT5 cables etc in a
corner of my home office but now I'm wondering about using the loft.
However I'm considered about dust and heat up there.

At the very least I'd consider having CAT5 cable run to a patch panel
there and the ether switch up there. The aerial coax already meets
there for a amp/splitter.

I'm planned on building a couple/few new servers and am considering
whether to put them up there - the RAID server probably would generate
too much heat (and the noise might echo down thru the roof into the
bedrooms) but the other boxes may be mini-ITX machines (not sure if
fanless) with no disks so they should run cool and quiet.

Basically I'm worried about dust in the loft getting sucked into PSU
and case fans. Also in summer I'd expect the loft gets quite hot and I
wouldn't want the servers dying due to it.

I guess I could put everything in a small rackmount chassis (10-12U
max) but these tend to be expensive.

Comments?