Machine Room Fire Protection - Campus Practice

Plant Operations

Plant Operations (at least one of) feels that we shouldn't be using sprinklers in machine rooms, and that foam can be almost as problematic as water.

AHS

BMH2302C

in the oldest part of the building, has no fire suppression in the room.

BMH1018A

in the newest part of the building has two sprinkler heads with red glass vials in them.

Arts

Arts Computing notes that they have two hand-held fire extinguishers for fire suppression in their machine room.

IST

In each of our large rooms we have at least two APC units (netbotz 200 is the current similar model) providing 4 temperature readings. They are monitored by our nagios instance. In our smaller rooms we have a single unit. The temperature monitoring is on the cold/inlet side, but it would catch AC failure. All our AC units are communicating so can call on the others if there is a failure.

MC 1st floor

no fire suppression.

Sharcnet

gas (FM200) suppression, and dry (non charged) "red" sprinklers.

BB2 (Blackberry Building #2)

dry sprinklers, with gas (FM200). They're updating from ceiling mounted smoke detectors to VESDA style.

CSCF

DC3556

"red" sprinklers, no smoke detectors.

DC3558

"red" sprinklers, no smoke detectors. It has a raised floor; electrical service is on the floor, under the raised floor tiles.

DC2303A

"red" sprinklers in half of the room, on the side away from the equipment rack. No smoke detectors. It has a raised floor.

MC3015

See "MFCF"

M3-3101

See "MFCF".

MFCF

MC3015

has no fire suppression system.

It was assembled over years from what were originally separate rooms not designed as machine rooms. The interior wall was bricked up from ceiling tiles to the real concrete some years ago to help improve air conditioning efficiency (so as not to be cooling the false ceiling of the whole third floor), but could not seal well enough for use of chemical fire suppressant. It's too expensive to retrofit water sprinklers.

The air conditioners' intake air temperature is monitored by Plant Ops. It's not known how rigorously, nor whether this would help detect anomalous high heat soon enough.

It has a raised floor; electrical service is under the raised floor tiles.

M3-3101

gas (FM200), no water sprinklers, and conventional smoke detectors.

The air conditioners are managed by Plant Ops. It's not known how rigorously, nor whether this would help detect anomalous high heat soon enough.

It has a raised floor; electrical service is under the raised floor tiles.

Science

Science has developed extensive monitoring (for labs and machine rooms). They say:

We have a couple of different ways of measuring the temperature/humidity. We have an all-in-one system that uses a Raspberry Pi to log and display temperatures or a multipoint system that can be used with any Linux box. Both systems are based on the Dallas 18S20: http://datasheets.maximintegrated.com/en/ds/DS18S20.pdf and used Digitemp: https://www.digitemp.com/