Access Flooring
Data Build Technologies providing a whole range of Raised Access Flooring
Raised Access Flooring is one of the key ingredients in the design and building of flexible, integrated infrastructure for commercial and technical facilities
Types Floor Finishes - Commercial Applications
Raised Flooring in office area, lobbies and corridors usually opt finishes such as:
- Carpet tiling
- Terrazzo tile
- Ceramic tile
- Natural Stone – Marble, Granite
- Wood, parquet
- Linoleum
- All Steel Panels : Suitable for a wide range of applications in Data Center, Telecom Rooms, Mission critical facilities and Equipment Rooms.
- Steel & Cementitious Core Panels: This is the most widely used system and consist of top and bottom steel sheets with light weight concrete as core material. Panel is known for its superior safety factor as it prevents catastrophic collapse of panel at failure load.
- Calcium Sulphate Core Panels: This type of panel is also most widely installed system due to its very high loading and acoustic properties as well as highest Fire resistance characteristics among all Access Floor systems.
- Chipboard Panels: They are made of woodcore and steel encapsulated. It offers lightweight panel facilitating easy operation especially for Commercial space applications. Panel is known for and very good acoustic performance as well.
- Aluminum Access Flooring: Made from die cast aluminum for installations at critical environments such as Clean Rooms, Semiconductor factory, micro-electric assembly facilities, biomedical, pharmaceuticals, laboratories etc.
Testing Standards
Performance Loads for Access Flooring Systems
Concentrated Load: Loads applied on a small area of 25mm x 25mm of the panel until panel deflection occurs and measured the permanent set.
Uniform Loads: These are loads applied on and measured on the entire surface of the panel, imposed by furniture, equipment without legs. It is typically measured in the form of loads over a square meter area until deflection occurs.
Ultimate Load: is a load where structural failure occurs upon application. Usually two multiples of Concentrated loads are accepted norm. This is also known as Safety Factor of two for the panel.
Rolling Load: Typically known as the load imposed by wheels, moving on the Raised Floor. it is measured as the number of passes of wheel on the floor on the floor tile, carrying the weight of the Cart and Contents.
Rolling load is an important factor in selection of the Access Floor type for a facility where heavy moving load is expected to be imposed on the proposed Floor.
Impact Load: This test requires the Access Floor to sustain certain specified load when it is dropped from a height of 914mm without failure of the system.
Pedestal Axial Load: is the criteria in Pedestal selection which recommends the pedestal to sustain certain specified load without suffering permanent deformation on the pedestal.
Various Height Pedestals
Raised Access Floor Heights
Purpose of Raised Access Flooring is to create an accessible void under the floor in which various building and network services are efficiently accommodated. The type and nature of services required under the floor determine the height for the Access Floor. For instance:
- A normal office floor might just need 75mm to 150mm floor height to accommodate power, voice and data cables.
- An office with Under Floor Air Delivery (UFAD) shall have a height from 250mm to 400mm
- Server Room, Electrical Room, Telecom Room have heights 300 to 600mm
- Data Center, Switchgear Room floors containing large number of electrical, mechanical and HVAC services shall have heights 450-1200mm
Office with Access Floor
Floor heights exceeding 300mm for equipment room, server rooms, data centers etc,.shall require stringers bolted to the pedestal heads forming a grid on which the panels would be laid. This facilitates easy handling of panels whenever the floor void needs to be accessed for various underfloor services.
On the other hand, typically an office, commercial space flooring up to 200mm floor height need an Access Floor with panels fixed directly with the pedestals using screws on four corners of the tiles.