Raised floor, Solid floor... or carpet?

Thu Apr 1 20:43:03 UTC 2010

> > Its an april fools joke for them.  Dare I say that I have actually seen
> > DCs with carpeting. My jaw dropped but it does exist.
> 
> We had carpeted floor tiles in a data center where I used to work. It was 
> bound to the raised floor panels, and I was told it had anti static 
> properties. Never noticed a static issue, but the room had proper air 
> handlers with humidity control.

Anti-static properties are obtained easily enough but sometimes the
material requires periodic re-treating; the normal industrial chemical
products like Staticide and Stat-trol are sometimes a little "stinky"
and not always something you want to spray unless you can let it dry
overnite.  Since the floor tile does not have to be covered in tile 
and can have metal directly below the carpet, I would imagine that the
anti-static properties would be halfway decent even with minimal
treatments.

Those who do not care for the stench of stinky chemicals seem to favor
treating with Downy (yes, really, no Apr1).  Especially in the earlier
days of the Internet, where small ISP's set up shops in existing space,
it seemed quite common to find them spraying a water/Downy mix on the
carpets periodically, which left a characteristically odd "boy are my
clothes ever so soft today" smell, and really did a number on static.

What amazes me these days is how common it is to go someplace where the
cubies are in "dry" conditions with carpets, and you see people hauling
gear and cards back and forth while you can feel the static.

You can get regular anti-static carpeting for office spaces too, though
the problem with anything carrying the label "anti-static" tends to be
expense.  The meaning of the term also varies, ranging from static 
reduction to static suppression to static elimination.

Ah, here we go:

http://staticsmart.com/esd-static-control-products/access_floors.php

... JG
-- 
Joe Greco - sol.net Network Services - Milwaukee, WI - http://www.sol.net
"We call it the 'one bite at the apple' rule. Give me one chance [and] then I
won't contact you again." - Direct Marketing Ass'n position on e-mail spam(CNN)
With 24 million small businesses in the US alone, that's way too many apples.