Versatility is a key strength of raised access flooring, but out of the many different reasons to get in touch with a flooring contractor to organise and set up the pedestals, the grid and the set of tiles, there is a relatively neat divide between needs and desires.
There are plenty of reasons to want access tiles, from evening the slope of a room, providing a robust base to lay a carpet, protecting the underlying flooring or removing the need for awkward, arbitrary stepped floorplans. It can also be useful for media rooms and other places with a lot of cabling.
At the same time, a raised access floor can also be a necessity rather than a choice, and indeed some needs and wants will overlap in this context. Sometimes it becomes important, if not legally required, to have an even floor, in other cases vital utilities need to pass underneath the floor.
However, the one workspace where an access floor is effectively essential is in data centres and server rooms.
Why Do You Need Access Flooring In Server Rooms?
A data centre or a server room is a room dedicated to housing vast amounts of computer equipment used for networking, data storage and service provision. Most hospitals, office buildings and public sector workplaces will have a server room out of necessity.
The issue with a data centre is that with so many pieces of computer equipment, there are even more wires, cables and connectors that need to be connected to equipment not only within the server room itself but in an organised way to computer equipment outside of it.
This makes cable management a massive issue not only from a practical work-focused aspect but also from a safety aspect for people working within server rooms.
Without an access floor, this leaves a mass of trailing cables lying along the wall or potentially even creating a trip hazard on the floor. There have been a lot of particularly unfortunate attempts to compensate for a lack of floor access by using cable safety mats but these systems are simply inadequate for rooms which are substantially made up of cabling.
It is not just about laying cabling either but having easy access to it in the event of a technical issue. If there is a fault with any one of potentially hundreds or even thousands of wires, a technician can easily access the relevant issue by raising a single part of the floor.
This makes it more efficient as well as safer to work in.
Finally, there is the matter of heat management and cooling. Server equipment generates a considerable amount of heat whilst in operation, and the void space introduced using a raised floor helps to distribute cooled air through to computers that need it.
As well as this, cooling HVAC cabling can be easily fitted underneath the server racks, which
increases the efficiency of cooling, the effectiveness of a computer in operation and helps make the business as a whole more productive as a consequence.
