Telecommunications and equipment rooms: a primer for architects.
The days when telecommunications equipment was housed in electrical panels, boiler rooms and other utility rooms are long gone.
However, the situation has changed dramatically these days, due to the complexity of the telecommunications equipment used, as well as its ever-increasing importance in use and scale of application.
What are the main criteria for developing layouts for telecommunications and equipment rooms, as well as assessing the suitability of the areas required for this?
This information is very important for architects.
How can we ensure that “equipment connections” do not disrupt the integrity of the architectural design?
First, let’s define the scale.
There are large, so-called “equipment rooms” and, occupying smaller areas, “telecommunication rooms”.
• The equipment room serves the building as a whole. This is the place from which providers carry out their services.
The main cable through which information is exchanged is located here, as well as the centralized complex of the main equipment.
The development of equipment rooms is a difficult matter and is strategically important in the maintenance of buildings.
• Telecommunications rooms usually serve a floor or even part of a floor of a building (there is a concept of «service area»). In these rooms, the distribution of cable facilities occurs. Cables are distributed to individual telecommunications outlets, which supply information to workstations.
These rooms house the equipment that connects the communication lines of the service area to the equipment room.
All buildings differ in location, size and purpose, so when planning the placement of telecommunications rooms, each building must be assessed individually.
The location and size of telecommunications and equipment rooms must be taken into account due to the length of their life cycle.
Once these rooms are laid out during construction and infrastructure and equipment are built into them, they remain in these places permanently and cannot be moved during interior redevelopment.
When locating and planning these service spaces, it is necessary to initially reflect potential technological needs for the next 15-20 years, which may change due to technological progress or during the repurposing of organizations located in the building.
There are some general recommendations on how to locate these service spaces and how to plan their expected areas.
Equipment rooms
Equipment rooms should be located in the center of the building to minimize the length of the main cable from which internal wiring is done.
The location of the “equipment room” should be such that it does not interfere with the installation of large equipment and is accessible from corridors and rooms open to the public.
The potential for expanding the working area is important here (for which the adjacent rooms are studied).
The location of the equipment room should be above the groundwater level, away from sources of electromechanical impact (transformers, motors and generators, X-ray machines, radio transmitters, induction relays, etc.), as well as sources of strong vibration.
Any equipment not related to the operation of the building network should not be mounted in the equipment room, and its wiring should not pass through or enter this room.
Since the control room is the primary “entry point” for building technology systems, it is important to recognize that the workspace requirements for these systems (smart home systems include subscriber television, building automation systems, and security systems) are different from those for telephone exchanges and data collection servers.
The minimum size of the control room is 8 x 10 feet (2.44 x 3.05 m).
The actual size of the control room is usually determined at the building schematic design stage, when additional information about the project is received.
The ceiling height should be at least 8 feet 6 inches (about 2.6 m), and it is necessary to ensure that there is free space above the installed equipment.
The room must be protected from any airborne contaminants and must be equipped with a ventilation and air conditioning system that operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Cable ducts must be connected to the main cable, and there must be access to the cable ducts themselves.
Temperature and humidity control, a separate power line with its own electrical panel are required. Grounding must also be provided in the equipment room.
The minimum lighting level established is 50 footcandles (1 footcandle = 10.76 lux), which is approximately 500 lux.
The equipment room must have access to public corridors and rooms, and the doors themselves must be at least 36 inches (about 0.91 m) wide and 80 inches (about 2.03 m) high, have no lower step and be equipped with a locking device (lock).
Preferably, double doors should be installed that open not from a central post, but directly on site.
In addition to communications equipment, the equipment room should contain climate control equipment, air conditioners, uninterruptible power supply systems, and electrical outlets.
Telecommunications rooms
Telecommunications rooms do not serve the building as a whole, but individual floors or other parts of the building (zones).
Many of the rules used in the design of equipment rooms are also applicable to telecommunications rooms.
These rooms should be centrally located and informationally connect several floors of a multi-story building so that vertical cable raceways and other systems that span several floors can pass through them.
Connected rooms should be connected to each other through cable raceways that should extend at least 2 inches (about 0.05 m) from the floor in each room.
Cable ducts and trays leading to telecommunications rooms should be brought completely inside the room and only sealed there.
Telecommunications rooms should be located as close as possible to the center of the serviced area.
Telecommunications rooms should not be located near load-bearing columns of the building or external walls, as this limits the possibilities for laying cable management and wiring cable channels.
The distance between telecommunications rooms located on the same floor should not exceed 90 meters.
The size of telecommunications rooms can vary depending on the size of the service area, the density and placement of telecommunications equipment that may be used to connect users.
Organizing such a room requires installing outputs from various devices, and this must be planned at the design stage.
There is a simple rule for determining the size of a telecommunications room. If the service area is less than 5,000 square feet (465 square meters), the room size should be 10 x 7 feet (3 x 2 m).
If this area is between 5,000 and 8,000 square feet (465-743 square meters), the room size should be 10 x 9 feet (3 x 2.7 m). If the area is more than 8,000 square feet (465-743 square meters), the room size should be 10 x 9 feet (3 x 2.7 m). feet (743 sq. m), then the room size increases to 10 x 11 feet (3 x 3.4 m).
These brief recommendations are intended to help the architect have an initial idea of how to place telecommunications and equipment rooms in order to fit them into the overall architectural design of the building in advance.