When one of the UK’s largest Telecoms and Broadcast services provider decided to make some changes in their data centre to improve the air conditioning efficiency, they wanted to install “Cold Aisle Compartments”, which left the existing Argon Gas Fire Suppression needing to be modified to provide extra discharge nozzles and smoke detection for the newly installed compartment as per the relevant regulations and guidelines.
To modify any Gas Fire Suppression System, there is a requirement to return to the OEM supplier of the Gas equipment to hydraulically re-calculate and re-certify that the system will work correctly with new room layout and deliver the correct design concentrations according to BS6266:2011. Bryland have contacts within the suppression industry that normally allow this to be done, however in this case the OEM manufacturer no longer supported the Gas equipment, so while the system was perfectly serviceable and fit of purpose – the addition of the compartments within the room had made the Gas Fire Suppression needing extensive modification.
The instant suggestion would be to remove the whole system, and start again, but in such a large Data Centre, this would have meant a cost of well into three figures and down time stretching into weeks.
This is the issue that Bryland Fire were faced with, and after careful consideration and close collaboration with TYCO, a plan was formed to reuse all of the existing discharge pipework, which was quite a considerable cost saving in such a large space. The plan was to replace the original Argon cylinder banks with TYCO IG55 ones, and also to replace the discharge nozzles in the space. TYCO’s new pipework hydraulic calculation was worked through and proven, and from that, Bryland Fire were able to re-certify the system.
The install was “flooded” with labour over a weekend – as that was the Customers favoured installation time (less traffic through the Data Centre), and was completed in two days.
The result was a much more favourable cost against a new system, with massively reduced downtime over implementing a new system. The customers representative commented:
“We really are happy that we have been able to re-use so much of the old system, both from a cost and downtime saving point of view. Bryland have been brilliant, especially when it comes to the flexible weekend working that they did to fit in with our requirements. Job well done!“
