Four growing trends in today’s data center are very topical for an IT and telco facility manager, but which appear not to have been sufficiently debated in the fire protection community. They are:

Air-change rates are up, causing a non-compliance of the smoke detection system.
New airflow topologies are hiding fire risks.
Economy cooling/air-side economization is heightening the risk of smoke contamination.
Sprinklers are back in the data center.

We’ll address each of these trends in a series of future posts. Today, let’s look at the first regarding air-change rates.

Heat densities in the average data center have quadrupled in recent years. Increased heat densities need more cooling capacity, typically delivered through cooled air. Delivering all that air has massively increased the air-change rate in the data center. It’s getting very windy in there.

NFPA 72 requires increased density of point (spot)-type detectors in the case of higher data center airflow. If you have upgraded or augmented your precision cooling systems since you installed traditional point (spot)-type detectors, then your data center may now be non-compliant. Getting compliant will mean a significant investment…and where will it end?

At the highest air-change rates, you will need to have more than seven times the standard number of detectors in the space. That is seven times the investment and seven times the inconvenience and risks of routine testing and maintenance above your mission-critical equipment.

Why do the codes dictate this? Is this extra investment worthwhile, and does it help improve detection performance? Do other options exist that will enable you to stay code- compliant into the foreseeable future as well as provide real early warning protection from fire?

The FPRF is considering a study on these questions that might improve certainty of code compliance and cost efficiency of detection. Did you know that air-sampling smoke detection systems (ASD) have an exemption from this code requirement? They stay compliant whatever the air-change rate – with significantly reduced costs.

Data center designers really need to implement systems that stay code-compliant into the foreseeable future and will actually provide real early warning protection from fire. ASD enables that.

Data Center Trends: Growing Air-change Rates Can Lead to Smoke Detection Noncompliance