On Jul 29, 20:17, Eros, Anthony wrote:
> With any luck, I may be putting up a small building to use as a computer
> room in the next few months. It won't be huge (24 x 12), but I'm toying
> with the idea of putting a raised floor in it. Does anyone know of a
source
> for surplus raised flooring?
That's not very much bigger than mine.
I got mine from someone (in the UK) who clears commercial/industrial
buildings before they're reused or demolished. It was very cheap (compared
to new prices) but there was a fair amount of work involved in cleaning the
glue off the old supports, checking all the screw threads, cutting the
supports to the right length [1], sorting out the damaged/warped panels [2]
and those that were slighly odd sizes (mine are nominally 600mm square but
a few turned out to be 590 x 600 or 610 x 600, presumably for edges). And
don't forget that you need different supports for edges and corners, for
most types. BTW, the same source I used had lots of fancy lighting
fittings, suspended ceilings, air ducting and fittings, electrical fittings
(including floor boxes), doors, etc at knockdown prices.
Since there's a lot of metal in the supports, and the panels are normally
steel-clad, you might indeed find something at a scrapyard, as Sellam
suggests.
One of my friends got secondhand flooring from a university that was moving
its computer room. Ask around -- I've heard of places that take up the
floor and fill it in with concrete screeding to reuse the room. If you can
make your want known before that happens, you have the opportunity to
remove the panels and supports.
If you get second-hand flooring, mail me for tips. I now know more than I
really wanted to about the do's and don't of secondhand computer floors :-)
It *is* worth doing, though, if you can find some. I'm really pleased
with mine now it's all done.
[1] You might not have to do this -- my floor had originally been raised
about 20" high and I only wanted a little over 6".
[2] The panels are pretty heavy, and if not stacked sensibly -- mine were
in 8' high stacks -- they have a tendency to warp over a long period of
time. Warped tiles mean uneven floors or tiles that rock slightly.
--
Pete Peter Turnbull
Dept. of Computer Science
University of York
Received on Sun Jul 30 2000 - 05:47:38 BST