Server room floor

[TronXP]

At the last place I worked, we got broken into, and the thiefs lifted up the ceiliing tiles outside the server room and our office. We were told by police that they often do this as the lowered ceilings sometimes hide walls that don't go to ceiling hight and the theifs crawl through these gaps to get into locked rooms. Thank god our rooms were alright we had just taken delievry of 150 dell laptops.

[torledo]

You should really have a firewall round all corridors - or for instance, above fire doors so areas become zones.

I'd recommend you got one installed - especially in a server room - if you get a fire in that void it'll be through the building in minutes.

As for boring holes through, you can always fill the gaps up with fire retardent expanding form.

Having loooked again, I was wrong the wall does goe up to the ceiling...it's just there are wooden joists and metal cable trays going across. Hence there are some small gaps. Obviously the wooden joists are holding up the ceiling but are they not a fire hazard aswell as they stretch over adjoning areas ? We have a lot of open plan areas, so we don't have any corridors in the traditional sense more like walkways, all the rooms have walls going up to the ceiling but as I've said there's cable trays, ventilation ducting and joists going across so very little of it is completely airtight.

As for the holes I mentioned they are 100mm wide but do have cat5 cabling running through them so the gaps are small i.e nothing airtight...do i still need the foam.

As for the story of thieves crawling through the drop ceiling...I'd like them try in any of the rooms in our place....The drop ceiling void is tight as f***
mainly because of an ancient, disused ventilation system running through.

[SYNACK]

You can only go so far fireproofing in a standard building. Smaller gaps mean a that it should take longer for any fire to spread as it mus first burn through the walls to get to the rooms or corridors next to it. It is always just a effort to slow it down though. To stop it you would need a more active fire protection method like gas fire suppressors.

As there are ventilation shafts spanning the room the fire would have a path out anyway. Because of this your setup is probably around as good as it can be.

- Interesting Story -

A while ago I heard an interesting story about a fire in a University. They had a fire in one of the main server rooms which they eventually managed to put out. About three days later another of the networking rooms across campus caught fire, then the next day another. In each instance they could not find out why the fire had started. A day later a third networking room caught fire and they figured it out.

The networking rooms that caught fire were all linked up to the first room with outdoor fiber. In older outdoor fiber installations the fiber cores are enclosed in an oily substance to prevent water from getting in. The fire in the first building had set fire to the oil in the fiber cable and had burnt slowly along the cable till it reached a new source of fuel.

This incident changed the way that outdoor fiber was produced and caused a few places to rip out their existing infrastructure.