Remember back in the day when you first got your desk top computer and then had what seemed like thousands of wires and cables coming out from it to be either plugged back in somewhere else or into an outlet? Remember thinking how the heck you’d hide all of those wires that were unsightly and ruined the look of the room?
Well, today we may be more wireless when it comes to our personal electronics but when you are in an office setting with multiple cables, the electronic system and all the other mechanical things that keep that office running where do you put all the cables and wires? Increasingly, they are going under the floor.
Yes, we have raised flooring now that has been used in Europe for decades already, but is becoming fashionable right here in North America. The raised floor is also called a raised access computer floor as it allows for panels to be taken out at will for techs to get in there and figure out where the problem lies and have easy access to fix it all without disrupting anything or anyone and leaving a huge mess.
Raised floors can be as little as 2″ above the regular floor or as much as 4′ depending on the needs of the client. If you will need someone to be able to physically get under there and be able to crawl around, naturally you’ll need a larger area for which to do that, but if it’s just for cables and wires, a smaller space will suffice.
The floor itself is usually made of steel clad particle board or steel panels that have an internal core. They can be covered with ‘regular’ flooring options like carpet tiles, high pressure laminates, marble or stone, depending on the look the area needs, or they can be left looking like cement ’tiles’ which is perfect for hallways and lobbies. For computer rooms, anti static components are used on the floor to stop all that static in its tracks and you can even opt for under floor air distribution technology as well, that cools and heats the rooms from below, making ceiling vents obsolete and creating flexible spaces with which to work.
Raised flooring is quickly becoming the go to for many offices and labs as it looks like a regular floor but has a secret–it’ll hide all of the inner workings of the office while still allowing easy access to everything.