ozydave Posted February 1, 2013 Posted February 1, 2013 Hello Just wanted to check I am not missing some important advancement / discovery in science where water no longer conducts electricity Moving to a new build soon and they want to install a water sprinkler system in the server room. Not sure who thought this one up, local authority or builders. I can understand the need for a fire suppression system but water…. With redundant hot swappable parts on server / switches etc, power supplies all sorts, I don’t want to be the one standing at the back of a server rack, hands in servers when the sprinkler system goes off by design or accident. Think my risk assessment will be to turn off everything including the UPS if I need to touch a piece of equipment in the server room. Kind of makes the redundant features of equipment redundant.. Any got any thoughts or is it just me! Cheers
Jawloms Posted February 1, 2013 Posted February 1, 2013 I had a friend who who was a NM, went on leave for a fortnight and came back to find a water sprinkler system had been installed in his server room. He isolated the power to the room and refused to turn it back on until the water system was turned off.
Geoff Posted February 1, 2013 Posted February 1, 2013 (edited) You need to use a gas based fire suppression system in a server room. New installs tend to be CO2 based but I always have fond memories of the older Halon based systems. There's nothing quite like watching your PFY setting off the halon release then sprinting for the breathing apparatus before the oxygen gets forceably removed from the room and he suffocates. Edited February 1, 2013 by Geoff
tobiasclarity Posted February 1, 2013 Posted February 1, 2013 Hello Just wanted to check I am not missing some important advancement / discovery in science where water no longer conducts electricity Moving to a new build soon and they want to install a water sprinkler system in the server room. Not sure who thought this one up, local authority or builders. I can understand the need for a fire suppression system but water…. With redundant hot swappable parts on server / switches etc, power supplies all sorts, I don’t want to be the one standing at the back of a server rack, hands in servers when the sprinkler system goes off by design or accident. Think my risk assessment will be to turn off everything including the UPS if I need to touch a piece of equipment in the server room. Kind of makes the redundant features of equipment redundant.. Any got any thoughts or is it just me! Cheers I am sure if anything HAS to be installed like that it is meant to be one of those Halon systems, weirdly first knew about this system after watching terminator 2 This is a vid of it accidentally going off, naturlaly you wouldnt want to be near it when it does!!!
localzuk Posted February 1, 2013 Posted February 1, 2013 Water based suppression in a room for electrical systems. Not the smartest idea on the planet! I'd point out that such an idea is preposterous and dangerous. I wouldn't go into a room like that!!
elsiegee40 Posted February 1, 2013 Posted February 1, 2013 @Soulfish has the water feature installed in his server room... Not a good idea
FN-GM Posted February 1, 2013 Posted February 1, 2013 Legally there is no reason why it can't be disconnected.
twin--turbo Posted February 1, 2013 Posted February 1, 2013 They were going to put it in our server room, We headed them off at the pass during an M&E meeting. They still put it in the second distribution room , but we had them disconnect it. And for the record.. Water does NOT conduct electricity. Rob
twin--turbo Posted February 1, 2013 Posted February 1, 2013 if they used distilled water it'd be ok Well , yes and no...
Oaktech Posted February 1, 2013 Posted February 1, 2013 C02 FTW. I'd kick up an almighty stink. It would only take one rogue kid and a member of site management to be a second too late cancelling the alarm and the disaster recovery plan (we all have one, right?) would have to be enacted. No Thanks...
Abaddon Posted February 1, 2013 Posted February 1, 2013 Halon is no longer used - we have an Argonite system installed in our server room. Not quite as human unfriendly as halon, but you still wouldn't want to be in the same room. There is a 30 second panic delay button installed near the door (just in case). The alarm that sounds is like the red alert klaxon on the USS Enterprise - how cool is that?
ozydave Posted February 1, 2013 Author Posted February 1, 2013 Well , yes and no... That's good news I can have a shower with my hairdryer tonight then 1
mjs_mjs Posted February 1, 2013 Posted February 1, 2013 If you'r going to argue this point make sure you have your EPO's connected to your UPS's so that should the fire or ambulance service need to kill power to the room you also kill the UPS's.
sjatkn Posted February 2, 2013 Posted February 2, 2013 I have seen some reports of sprinklers being used in server rooms, but to make it work properly they were linked to the power system. So when the sprinkler goes off so does the power. The argument being that if you clean and dry the hardware then it is likely to work (at least sufficiently to recover the data). However I can imagine most schools would have the UPS in the same rack as the server making it hard to keep it dry in the unlikely event they actually linked the power & sprinklers. I would also worry about accidental triggering.
ozydave Posted February 2, 2013 Author Posted February 2, 2013 Thanks for the comments. If they force it my risk assessment will be that I will not hot swapping anything. The power to server room including UPS will be shut off first
Soulfish Posted February 2, 2013 Posted February 2, 2013 As has been mentioned we do have sprinklers in our server room. Unfortunately we ran out of money to put anything else in (the dfe refused to change the build spec!) and the insurers insist that if it's present the system has to be connected. What has been done is the sprinkler system is a dry pipe system, so no water is in the server room. The sprinklers aren't triggered by the fire alarm, but are triggered by heat causing the sprinkler heads to release. The power and UPS system (all rack PDUs are powered by a centralised 30kva UPS system with bypass) are connected to the sprinklers (via water sensors in the pipe work) and the fire alarm system. When the sprinklers or fire alarm system are triggered the ups goes into bypass. When water is detected the batteries in the UPS are isolated and power is killed to the room. The ups system is also in an IP65 rated case to protect the batteries from the sprinklers!
Jamo Posted February 2, 2013 Posted February 2, 2013 We have water sprinklers in ours. We pointed it out when we first got into the new building. They informed us that the sprinklers are mechanical, ie they have a glass bead in them which has to melt to actually set them off. In other words if the sprinklers start, there is already no server room left!
featured_spectre Posted February 2, 2013 Posted February 2, 2013 In my last place I asked for the sprinkler system to be removed from the server room and be replaced with a Halon or Argon suppression system, only took a fire for them to do it after the servers fried from the water.
SYNACK Posted February 2, 2013 Posted February 2, 2013 We have water sprinklers in ours. We pointed it out when we first got into the new building. They informed us that the sprinklers are mechanical, ie they have a glass bead in them which has to melt to actually set them off. In other words if the sprinklers start, there is already no server room left! Yea I think the pressure wave from one blowing will set off more, the balls are also held in place by gravity and water pressure, sudden drops may cause leaks.
Geoff Posted February 2, 2013 Posted February 2, 2013 (edited) If you freon gas cylinder fails in your air conditioning unit then the back pressure will set off the sprinklers. There is nothing else in typical server room that would cause enough of a pressure increase to set off sprinkers accidently. Outside influces such as earth tremors need to be considered though too. Plus my favourite, human error. We have water sprinklers in ours. We pointed it out when we first got into the new building. They informed us that the sprinklers are mechanical, ie they have a glass bead in them which has to melt to actually set them off. In other words if the sprinklers start, there is already no server room left! The purpose of a CO2 fire suppresion system is to stop the fire before your servers are destroyed. If they only fitted a fire suppression system with an aim to save the building, rather than the contents then it's not fit for purpose from your point of view surely? Edited February 2, 2013 by Geoff
tb2571989 Posted February 4, 2013 Posted February 4, 2013 We have water in our server room. I queried it when the school was being built but was told it was needed to meet building regulations. There's 4x sprinkler heads (I can see, anyway) in the roof. I can only hope it's "dry" pipes (no water in the pipe until heat is detected) rather than "wet" (water in pipe 24/7, if you knock the bulb with a ladder, etc, get a bucket). Ideally we would have had a gas system but you need an external release and as our server room is on a main corridor it would be flipped quite regularly. I also understand it it works on heat rather than smoke, and not on alarm, so if a student knocks a call point the sprinklers won't trigger. You'd have to physically go into the server room and hold something warm up to the senser. I don't know what it would class as "warm" say...if the power failed, then the servers came back on and the air con didn't...then it would get fairly warm in there...warm enough to trigger the sprinklers? I don't know. I don't want to know. We have fairly comprehensive disaster recovery procedures but nothing could prepare us for the potential complete and utter destruction of all systems that reside in the room (which is just about all of them).
netadmin Posted February 4, 2013 Posted February 4, 2013 I don't know what it would class as "warm" say...if the power failed, then the servers came back on and the air con didn't...then it would get fairly warm in there...warm enough to trigger the sprinklers? I don't know. I don't want to know. What temperature the sprinkler activates at depends on the model of the head. It could be as low as 135 degrees F (57.2 C) or higher than 200 degrees F (93.3 C). The most common activation temperature is 155 degrees F (68.3 C). At the last school I worked at, they had a "wet" pipe system in the server room with a head almost directly over the rack. It would have been too costly to switch to a gas-based fire suppression system so we instead switched the head out to a "concealed" one where there is only a small cover plate exposed below the ceiling tiles (the head pops down if temperatures start to approach its activation temperature). This eliminated the risk of someone/something accidentally hitting the head and setting it off.
ozydave Posted February 7, 2013 Author Posted February 7, 2013 Look like they have got there way and installing the water system. They say its for building regs. Building reg state fire suppression system. So as always it's down to cost over personal health and safety. The local authority health and safety adviser drafted an email back to my query and said "As discussed, a wet sprinkler system should not be used in areas where there are electrical installations." Strange then that the local authority are the ones for the final sign off of the building. They said the sprinklers will set off 30 degrees above ambient temp. Another point - the new server room is on first floor directly over the heat bay of DT/resistant materials, the fumes of which are vented passed the server room wall. My dolly has well an truly gone out the pram I will try to insist that should they go off that the power including the UPS is shut off. There must be a system to do this Does anyone have a health and safety risk assessment for entering a server room with sprinklers Thanks for the replies by the way
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