Visit to CERN stores, 9^th June 2000

Aim: understand vertical racking possibilities.

With: Anne Funken, Jukka Lindroos + A.N. Other as guide from stores (Emmenegger absent)

Main stores have racking like that used for 3480 storage in the vault—uprights to which shelves can be attached at different heights. For the machine room we would probably need a two level shelving arrangement—with some equipment at floor level and more on a shelf at a height of around 2m. The assumption is that equipment would be in racks which themselves would have to be lifted up and/or assembled at this height.

A 2m clearance is required between racks to accommodate a hoist. Even a lightweight hoist needs space to manoeuver and to slide back out of the rack with the equipment. Lightest hoist at stores weighs 830kg itself with lifting capacity of 600kg. What are false floor limits?

According to Jukka, racks this high need to be placed under the air conditioning exhaust vents. The structure in the celing is 1.6m wide inlets on either side of a 1.4m wide exhaust. Thus the centre-to-centre distance between outlets is 3m. This accomodates a 1m wide shelf unit and a 2m wide access way in each 3m. Thus the “floor space” available is 2m each 3m.

Without racking, access can be limited to 1m. With 1m deep racks this provides 3m of racking in each 6m, or 1.5m each 3. Thus double height racking provides only a 33% increase in usable area—and this advantage decreases as standard racks are less than 1m deep and less than 1m access is required.