Where and when to use a raised floor…
Good day guys - thanks for clicking on this blog post! As you can see by the title, “where and when to use a raised access floor…” its pretty easy to know where I am going to go with this…
The answer….ANYWHERE! ha! You probably assumed I was going to say that…?
I truly believe that every single project, building, institution, etc. can benefit from a raised access floor, i really do believe that. I believe that for several reasons, the first being the cost. Too many times we face the question of additional cost due to an access floor - this is simply not the case, the raised access floor of course costs money, but the givebacks are at an equal. For instance, you have an existing space, you are renovating, you take the floor down to bare concrete and now you are left with several tasks….How do we distribute power? Is it through the ceiling with pack poles? Is it through the concrete floor via trenching, and/or coring? The concrete floor is going to receive finishes, how do we transition? Do you have to level the slab for certain finishes?
Lets assume you go ahead and build traditionally, noting all of the points above, what happens in several months when your company grows? How do you add furniture? How do you power those desks/equipment? How do you rearrange the space when you are tethered either by pack-poles or wall sockets?
This is where the raised access floor comes in - taking into account what we discussed above, ALL of those costs, coring, trenching, power-poles, leveling etc. are negated when you use a raised access floor! Therefore, are you truly paying more? No…you are not.
I know we have discussed the costs and what not of the raised vs traditional construction before, but this correlates to the title of this post, “where and when to use a raised floor…” and again, my answer is, ANYWHERE.
I am proud to say that our team and other competing companies have installed some unbelievable projects that employ raised access floors, from lecture halls, whereby they used the raised floors in a tiered setting, classrooms, command centers, control rooms, simulator rooms for aircraft training, flight control towers, jail guard control rooms, private data centers for houses, residential condo units, commercial trading floors, casinos, sports arenas, weight rooms, movie sets, libraries, museums, exterior patios, and so much more!
When you think about each of the examples above, think about how much sense it makes to have the power, hvac, data cables and other infrastructure under the floor, under the modular floor that can be simply picked up, accessed, moved, changed with ease! How easy it would be in a classroom to have power ran under the floor, allowing for collaborative working opportunities, and then return back to normal seating. Think about how easy it would be to have this at a museum! Changing the display, running power up from under the display cases (we do those also…) in Casinos, where the option to move slot machines and bring the air and electrical up from under the guests. How n control centers where you have miles and miles of cables, you can have these neatly arranged under the floor and easily ran under the machines. How cooling those hot computer stations can be done from right underneath, so much more efficiently!
Where and when to use a raised access floor? Every project, every single project can benefit from the use of a raised access floor guys, i have seen it, i have lived it now for almost 11 years.
Please reach out to us if you have any questions, i want to thank everyone who clicked on this blog post - we appreciate you taking the time!
Until next time everyone take care!
