On Thu, 30 March 2000, "Stephen Sprunk" wrote:
Maybe this is a facet of natural disasters rarely afflicting downtown areas around here...
Maybe an occasional cattle stampede through downtown Dallas ...
I've noticed that every telco colo facility I've been in around downtown Dallas has the same design... All are in high-rise facilities, on the 10th-30th floors. All have the battery and A/C rooms around the elevator shafts at the center of the floor plan, surrounded by all the equipment racks/cages around the outside facing the windows.
Gravity is a tough law to break. Batteries and mechanical equipment are heavy, and must go where the floor is strongest. Which tends to be the core of the building. As always consult a licensed structural engineer. Protecting against an airplane crashing into the side of the building is hard (although the Empire State building survived). Pick your risks and mitigate those within commercial reason. Lloyds of London exists for the rest. Sometimes the best commercial solution is putting your equipment around the outside. You loose one rack of routers to wayward tree, a few customers are down. Loose your electrical plant, and everyone is S.O.L. Triage is never a pleasant experience. Another note about battery rooms in high-rise buildings. There is/was a proposal before the NFPA to prohibit battery rooms above the third floor in high-rise structures after the L.A. CO fire. I haven't been keeping close watch on it, but Bellcore/Telcordia was fighting it tooth&nail.
This is disturbing, I think that people, environment and property are the crux of importance in the order stated. Above the 3rd floor is a risk to human life and therefore unacceptable, being A First Responder Operational (FRO) I can clearly see this as a serious risk, technical details of burning acid fumes omitted. Sean Donelan wrote:
On Thu, 30 March 2000, "Stephen Sprunk" wrote:
Maybe this is a facet of natural disasters rarely afflicting downtown areas around here...
Maybe an occasional cattle stampede through downtown Dallas ...
I've noticed that every telco colo facility I've been in around downtown Dallas has the same design... All are in high-rise facilities, on the 10th-30th floors. All have the battery and A/C rooms around the elevator shafts at the center of the floor plan, surrounded by all the equipment racks/cages around the outside facing the windows.
Gravity is a tough law to break. Batteries and mechanical equipment are heavy, and must go where the floor is strongest. Which tends to be the core of the building. As always consult a licensed structural engineer.
Protecting against an airplane crashing into the side of the building is hard (although the Empire State building survived). Pick your risks and mitigate those within commercial reason. Lloyds of London exists for the rest. Sometimes the best commercial solution is putting your equipment around the outside. You loose one rack of routers to wayward tree, a few customers are down. Loose your electrical plant, and everyone is S.O.L. Triage is never a pleasant experience.
Another note about battery rooms in high-rise buildings. There is/was a proposal before the NFPA to prohibit battery rooms above the third floor in high-rise structures after the L.A. CO fire. I haven't been keeping close watch on it, but Bellcore/Telcordia was fighting it tooth&nail.
-- Thank you; |--------------------------------------------| | Thinking is a learned process so is UNIX | |--------------------------------------------| Henry R. Linneweh
On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, Henry R. Linneweh wrote:
This is disturbing, I think that people, environment and property are the crux of importance in the order stated.
Above the 3rd floor is a risk to human life and therefore unacceptable, being A First Responder Operational (FRO) I can clearly see this as a serious risk, technical details of burning acid fumes omitted.
Sometimes there are not a lot of options. I work as a fire fighter and built one of my datacenters on the 5th floor because I had no options. I did make sure that it was marked out correctly because I know what it is like going through a building on fire. So far I have never worked a CO fire, but I am sure it is a mess.
<> Nathan Stratton nathan@robotics.net http://www.robotics.net
While I agree that preservation of life is a high priority, one must evaluate the business reality of what you're saying. Take a 50-story office building (or in Dallas's case, a couple dozen of them), in which you want a battery plant. The first floor is off limits (public access, lobby use, etc) as well as the fourth to the fiftieth. That means you have two floors of battery to power the other forty-seven? Not to mention the safety issues in hauling that amount of DC power up to the fiftieth floor. Throw in the proposed bans on diesel backup generators and you might as well forget batteries altogether. Or do you propose all existing carrier hotels (typically high-rises) be dismantled and replaced with large numbers of three-floor buildings? While short buildings may be a necessity in earthquake-prone areas like California, they're simply not economically viable in the rest of the country. I understand there are safety implications for the public, facility staff, and emergency services. I would support a proposal for mandatory markings, access control, environmental containment, fume ventilation, or any other reasonable safety measures; I can't support any proposal that effectively bans batteries. S | | Stephen Sprunk, K5SSS, CCIE #3723 :|: :|: Network Consulting Engineer, NSA :|||: :|||: 14875 Landmark Blvd #400; Dallas, TX .:|||||||:..:|||||||:. Email: ssprunk@cisco.com ----- Original Message ----- From: Henry R. Linneweh To: Sean Donelan Cc: nanog@merit.edu ; ssprunk@cisco.com Sent: Thursday, March 30, 2000 16:02 Subject: Re: Arlington and Fort Worth, Texas This is disturbing, I think that people, environment and property are the crux of importance in the order stated. Above the 3rd floor is a risk to human life and therefore unacceptable, being A First Responder Operational (FRO) I can clearly see this as a serious risk, technical details of burning acid fumes omitted. Sean Donelan wrote:
On Thu, 30 March 2000, "Stephen Sprunk" wrote:
Maybe this is a facet of natural disasters rarely afflicting downtown areas around here...
Maybe an occasional cattle stampede through downtown Dallas ...
I've noticed that every telco colo facility I've been in around downtown Dallas has the same design... All are in high-rise facilities, on the 10th-30th floors. All have the battery and A/C rooms around the elevator shafts at the center of the floor plan, surrounded by all the equipment racks/cages around the outside facing the windows.
Gravity is a tough law to break. Batteries and mechanical equipment are heavy, and must go where the floor is strongest. Which tends to be the core of the building. As always consult a licensed structural engineer.
Protecting against an airplane crashing into the side of the building is hard (although the Empire State building survived). Pick your risks and mitigate those within commercial reason. Lloyds of London exists for the rest. Sometimes the best commercial solution is putting your equipment around the outside. You loose one rack of routers to wayward tree, a few customers are down. Loose your electrical plant, and everyone is S.O.L. Triage is never a pleasant experience.
Another note about battery rooms in high-rise buildings. There is/was a proposal before the NFPA to prohibit battery rooms above the third floor in high-rise structures after the L.A. CO fire. I haven't been keeping close watch on it, but Bellcore/Telcordia was fighting it tooth&nail.
-- Thank you; |--------------------------------------------| | Thinking is a learned process so is UNIX | |--------------------------------------------| Henry R. Linneweh
Unnamed Administration sources reported that Stephen Sprunk said:
I understand there are safety implications for the public, facility staff, and emergency services. I would support a proposal for mandatory markings, access control, environmental containment, fume ventilation, or any other reasonable safety measures; I can't support any proposal that effectively bans batteries.
And to be blunt, considering the contents of modern buildings; I'd almost rather be in the battery room. They make rocket fuel out of the same stuff as in furniture stuffing and carpets/padding. Once it starts..... What DOES scare the shit out of me is battery rooms built by idiots; including those who THINK they know what they are doing, as well as the "It's just a few batteries" crowd. It's too bad Admiral Rickover was so successful; we could use a generation of retired Diesel-electric boat batteryroom rates. -- A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com & no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433 is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, David Lesher wrote:
What DOES scare the shit out of me is battery rooms built by idiots; including those who THINK they know what they are doing, as well as the "It's just a few batteries" crowd.
Any battery capable of being recharged SCARES ME TO DEATH. (Well not quite). Doing a fair bit of electronic design in the past, I realize how fragile a circuit can be. All it takes is the wrong thing to short out/go bad and you have boining sulfuric acid and the resulting fumes. The worst story I've heard about this is from a friend who was taking a UPS maintenance class (We're talking the big 3 phase ones here). While he was taking the class, someone came in and asked if anyone in the class had a specific model of UPS installed anywhere. What had happened is that due to bad design, a solder joint would melt and "reflow" onto an ajoining trace and as a result the charger would turn on full, eventually boiling the batteries. I don't even want to think what equipment looks like after it has been through sulfuric acid vapors. - Forrest W. Christian (forrestc@imach.com) KD7EHZ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iMach, Ltd., P.O. Box 5749, Helena, MT 59604 http://www.imach.com Solutions for your high-tech problems. (406)-442-6648 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
GEEZ I CAN'T EVEN TYPE TONIGHT.... On Fri, 31 Mar 2000, Forrest W. Christian wrote:
Doing a fair bit of electronic design in the past, I realize how fragile a circuit can be. All it takes is the wrong thing to short out/go bad and you have boining sulfuric acid and the resulting fumes.
Not sure what boining sulfuric acid is - of course I really meant boiling. (I also forgot to mention exploding NiCds...) - Forrest W. Christian (forrestc@imach.com) KD7EHZ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- iMach, Ltd., P.O. Box 5749, Helena, MT 59604 http://www.imach.com Solutions for your high-tech problems. (406)-442-6648 ----------------------------------------------------------------------
David Lesher wrote:
And to be blunt, considering the contents of modern buildings; I'd almost rather be in the battery room. They make rocket fuel out of the same stuff as in furniture stuffing and carpets/padding.
My father is a wholesale flooring supplies distributor. He sells carpet cushion. I've read the MSD's and I know exactly how flammable the stuff is. Don't drop a match anywhere near it. :) -- North Shore Technologies, Cleveland, OH http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net Steve Sobol, President, Chief Website Architect and Janitor sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net - 888.480.4NET - 216.619.2NET
participants (7)
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David Lesher -
Forrest W. Christian -
Henry R. Linneweh -
Nathan Stratton -
Sean Donelan -
Stephen Sprunk -
Steve Sobol