Vault Conversion

Equipping the vault as a Machine Room

Preparatory work, 5^th April - 27^th May

Not much visible happens in April and May due to the various holidays, but new lighting is installed in the vault and in the new storage areas. The first two pictures are from 24th April. The first shows some of the original cable trays; the second shows the network cables neatly attached to the ceiling. The next two pictures show a brighter vault with the new view from the blue doors.
The duct for the UPS battery room is now in its proper place.
The big power supply for the air conditioning unit has been removed (big patch on the far wall in the left picture) and replaced by this small box to the right of the unit in the second picture.
Smoke curtains are installed. These descend 50cm from the ceiling and are designed to stop smoke spreading at ceiling level.

Painting the floor and installing cable trays, 23^rd May - 14^th June

The floor is sanded down (dusty!) and painted; the walls are painted to a height of 70cm, the depth of the false floor.
Cable trays are installed around the edge of the room for electrical and control cables and across the room for network cables (fibre & utp)

Installing the new air conditioning, 14^th June -

Piping to carry cold water to the air conditioning units is run around the outside of the room under the false floor. (As originally planned; at one intermediate stage it had been thought that this piping would be at ceiling level.) The units will sit on frames as shown in the 4th picture. The water flow to each unit will be controlled by special valves. Each has a serial number and is carefully calibrated so the flow rate is known for a given dial setting.
Waste water piping is installed—and means the network cable trays have to be rerouted over the water pipes.
Foamglass insulation and protection is added...
The new underfloor duct for the UPS battery room hvac unit is installed. This will also provide fresh air to one of the vault units.
This chimney above the archive store needs to be replaced by a fan for smoke extraction.
Should it ever be necessary(!), smoke will be extracted from each zone into a duct passing through the storage areas and then back into the machine room to connect to the chimney and the extraction fan.

Electrical Distribution Work, 5^th July -

The PDUs arrive; their bases are installed and cables are pulled.
The PDUs and cables are positioned (the 3rd picture shows cables laid out to supply the normabarres). Boxes for the 48V supply and controls are installed.
The normabarres are installed as are cable trays for IT. (The first photograph shows the set of trays under the future robot area.)
The forest of normabarres is in place and most are connected to the PDUs.
A wired up PDU sitting neatly level with the false floor...

Network installation

Fibre then UTP cables are installed and the cables left waiting for the equipment racks.

Installing the false floor, 19^th August - 13^th September

19th August: everything arrives and the first panels are laid out.
21st August: 8 rows in place. Things look very different from 70cm up!
23rd August: 12 rows in place. The careful planning pays off---everything fits neatly together under the floor.
28th August
30th August
5th September
12th September

The new vault is ready for IT equipment!