Unlocking the Secrets of Anti-Static Flooring in ICT: Insights with Dave Long

Unlock the secrets of anti-static flooring and its crucial role in ICT environments with our special guest, Dave Long from Staticworx, a seasoned expert in static electricity issues since 1976. Listen as we break down the often overlooked intricacies of anti-static flooring, why it’s indispensable for telecommunications rooms (TRs), and the glaring gaps in industry standards like the Telecommunications Distribution Methods Manual (TDMM). We'll also touch upon the vital need for better training and the sharing of knowledge within our industry to inspire and educate the next generation of professionals.

Gain valuable insights into the importance of customer education in industries bound by stringent codes and standards. Dave Long and I delve into the real-world implications of non-compliance, such as the high-stakes environment of airport flight towers. Understand the critical distinction between "should" and "shall" in standards documentation, and how this knowledge empowers customers to make informed decisions that ensure safety and reliability in their projects. Our conversation sheds light on how proper education can lead to safer and more dependable outcomes.

In our technical deep dive, discover the nuts and bolts of Electrostatic Discharge (ESD) flooring installation. From the use of carbon-infused adhesives to the importance of grounding and initial testing, we cover all the essential steps and considerations. Learn about the rising popularity of free-floating interlocking tiles, the durability of ESD solutions, and the importance of maintaining conductive properties over time. This episode is a treasure trove of practical advice and expert insights, making it an invaluable resource for anyone involved in ESD flooring installations. Don't miss out on this comprehensive guide to understanding anti-static flooring and its pivotal role in modern ICT environments.

Chapters

• 0:01 Understanding Anti-Static Flooring
• 5:27 Educating Customers on Anti-Static Flooring
• 16:57 Static Electricity and Conductivity in Flooring
• 23:17 Understanding Antistatic Flooring Installation
• 29:10 Installation and Maintenance of Anti-Static Flooring
• 39:16 Testing and Standards for Antistatic Flooring

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

Hey Wiremonkeys, welcome to another episode of let's Talk Cabling. This episode we're talking about anti-static flooring. Welcome to the show where we tackle the tough questions submitted by installers, estimators, project foremen, project managers, customers. We are connecting at the human level so that we can connect the world. If you're watching this show on YouTube and you like this content, would you please hit the subscribe button and the bell button to be notified when new content is being produced? If you're listening to us on one of the audio podcast platforms, would you mind leaving us a five-star rating? Those three simple little steps helps us take on the algorithm so we can educate, encourage and enrich the lives of people in the ICT industry.

Speaker 1: 0:57

Wednesday nights, 6 pm, eastern Standard Time. What are you doing? I do a live stream on TikTok, facebook, linkedin, youtube and anywhere else I can, where you get to ask your favorite RCDD and you know that's me your favorite RCDD your questions on installation design, certification, project management, estimation. I even do career path questions. But I can hear you now, chuck, I'm driving my truck at Wednesday nights at 6 pm. I can't watch a video. I'll crash my truck. Relax. I record them and you can watch them at your convenience, when it is safe to do so. And finally, while this show is free and will always remain free, if you would like to and you find value in this content and you would like to help support the show, would you click on that QR code right there? You can buy me a cup of coffee. You can even schedule a 15-minute one-on-one call with me after hours, of course, and we're also looking for sponsorship as well.

Speaker 1: 1:55

So, as I said in the intro, anti-static flooring what the heck is that? Is it required? What does it do? You know, in the TDMM, the Telecommunications Distribution Methods Manual, it tells us that the TRs should you remember what should means should have antistatic flooring. But that's all the information it really gives you. It doesn't go into depth, and I didn't really think about it until a few weeks back. I was doing a tour at the Bixie Learning Academy and Christopher Hobbs mentioned they had anti-static flooring. I remembered oh yeah, that's in the TDM, but it doesn't go into depth with it. So you know me, I got on the old Google machine and I typed in anti-static flooring to find out what in the heck? What is it? How's it installed, what are the options? What the heck is this thing made out of how does it dissipate anti-static electricity? And I happen to come across this company and this individual. This individual I'm going to introduce in just a second. He trains people on how anti-static flooring works. Welcome to the show, dave Long. How are you doing, my friend?

Speaker 2: 2:58

I am doing great, chuck, and I really found a lot of inspiration in your introduction. You have a lot of energy and you have a lot of passion for what you do.

Speaker 1: 3:10

And it's contagious. Yeah, I've got the cues of that before. I did a sales meeting with a company one time and they were taking me around and introducing me to people and the guy says, oh, this is Chuck Bowser, he has a podcast. And the guy introduced me and goes, oh, what's your podcast about? He was saying it was going to be something cool like camping or survival or gardening. I said no, I do it on cabling. And he goes oh well, when I get off work at 5, I don't even want to think about cabling. Dude, my mind is always thinking about cabling, always, always. I'm trying. You know you're not being in the industry.

Speaker 1: 3:44

The whole reason I started the podcast was I noticed this thing called the gray tsunami, where a lot of people are aging out of our industry but we're not really attracting a lot of younger people to our industry and we as an industry are horrible about training our newer people because we want to keep that information close to our vest. I'm close to retirement. All the information that's in here, I give it away to anybody who wants it. I'm trying to inspire that next generation. So that's where all that passion comes from. The passion is not necessarily cabling. The passion is. I'm trying to inspire younger people that this is a viable option for a career path For those who didn't know that, because I've gotten a lot of new subscribers lately. So why don't you go and tell us who you are and your company, and what are you guys famous for?

Speaker 2: 4:30

Well, I got involved in the static electricity problem solving world in 1976. So it's been a while and the company that I operate, that I started, is called Static Works and it's kind of interesting. You talked about giving away information, taking what's here and passing it on to the next generation. Because when we started our company we had to think about not just who we want to be but how we want to be what we are, and we made what we thought at the time was a risky decision, which was let's just give information away. I'm sure everybody that's listening has had to deal with that. If you want the article, you have to provide your email and the next thing you know, for the rest of your life you're getting one email per day because you made that mistake. Well, we kind of we don't like that. I think most people don't. So we just decided let's give it away and see what happens. And the best thing about it and this is an old, I guess, rhetorical statement the best customer is an educated customer.

Speaker 1: 5:35

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding ding. 10,000 points right there. Say that again, please.

Speaker 2: 5:40

The best customer or client is an educated one.

Speaker 1: 5:43

Thank you, you're welcome. Thank you, you're welcome. Thank you. I get in that argument with people all the time because, you know, our industry is very codes and standards driven and customers don't know anything about cabling so they hire us to do it. And then when we want to do it the way the codes and standards say to do it, they'll tell us I don't have the money for that. I always tell people well, we got to do it because that's the way the customer wants it. No, it's your job to educate the customer so they can make the wisest decision for the budget and the problem they're trying to solve.

Speaker 1: 6:16

You have to educate them yeah exactly so glad to hear you say that. Oh my gosh, so great minds have a lot. What can I say?

Speaker 2: 6:21

I didn't come to that conclusion on my own. My head of marketing came to that conclusion and said I think you should do this. I went along with her opinion and the rest is history. So when we reach out to the world, we're actually not really talking about products. We're talking about the problem, the options, the risk of not doing it versus doing it, and what the various solutions might look like. So you know, you brought up something kind of interesting.

Speaker 2: 6:52

The word should, you know, should and shall become a big deal in standards organizations. Yes, right, and people argue about. Because I belong to some standards organizations and they they actually argue about. Do we? You should hear a shall, because shall is a pretty strong term. If you follow the letter of the document now and you're audited, if you don't have what you were supposed to have, you can be dinged in an audit. If it's an electronic manufacturing facility where they're building semiconductors, that can mean losing a customer. In the world where I think cabling kind of fits in, which is server rooms, comm centers, dispatch areas, data centers, there's no document that says you have to do something. There's a lot of shoulds.

Speaker 2: 7:45

So I get calls from architects and designers and sometimes they'll tell me that they were going to put carpet in, and the person that they were dealing with, who they specified carpet, told them they don't really need it. And I'll say, well, let's start with the fact do they know anything about static electricity? And the answer is no. And I say, do they have anti-static carpet? And the answer is no. And so you know, those two answers you just gave me might explain why. One of the reasons is that you don't need it. But let's actually talk about it from the bigger picture, which is risk reward. You know, if I'm doing what I'm doing right now and I have a static event, you're going to ding me back and we're going to get back in line and talk to each other. But if I'm running an electrical power plant and my system goes down, or I'll give you even a better example If I'm in a flight tower, years ago I got called by an airport I won't get into the exact specifics because it might make people a little nervous, but they called me because I was local and they were losing track of aircraft.

Speaker 2: 8:56

When I got to the flight tower, first thing I noticed was that you know that new carpet smell. Yeah, okay, I noticed the new carpet smell and very quickly they told me yesterday we put this carpet in and they were carpet squares for anybody that doesn't know what a carpet tile is. So these carpet squares, and the problem that we encountered was they told a local flooring contractor, we want the same thing we already have. Carpet was blue, it was square. So what did the local flooring contractor give? We want the same thing we already have. The carpet was blue, it was square. So what did the local flooring contractor give them? Blue squares. However, no one remembered that, probably 15 years earlier, those blue squares were purchased to have static dissipative properties. You know, anti-static properties. We can get into what that is in a little bit if you want. But they put in regular carpet and there was enough static electricity being generated that it was affecting their systems. So that's an FAA application. And just so you know, the FAA says shall they don't say should.

Speaker 1: 10:01

So let's take a side step real quick, because there might be some new people listening to this show who don't really thoroughly understand the impact of should and shall. Right. So for us there's three main types of books that we pay attention to Codes, standards and best practices. Should and shall is in all three of those. If the word shall for those who don't know shall is a requirement, you have to do it. You don't have a choice in the matter. If you word shall for those who don't know, shall is a requirement, you have to do it. You don't have a choice in the matter. If you don't, people can get hurt. People probably can get damaged. You might even be held legally liable for the damage, especially if it's in the code. Right, when you get to the standards, you will find the word shall there too. But standards are voluntary. So technically you know, we don't have to follow the standards if we don't want to. Now, the better companies do follow the standards, because standards guarantee performance. Now if you enter a contract with a customer that says your work will meet and or exceed the ANSI standards, now all those shalls in the standards become absolute requirements, right. So should is a recommendation.

Speaker 1: 11:04

So that's why I tell people all the time words have meanings. Be careful which words you use. Right, and that doesn't surprise me at all when you said they fight over that whole should and shall, because I've sat in a few committee meetings myself and you're exactly right, because they have such a huge impact legally. Legally, people can be actually put in jail If it says you know people can be actually put in jail If, like if it says you know you shall put in a fire stop system that's matches the rating of the wall, and if you don't and people get injured, you can actually be put in prison for that. Because it was a shall and it was in the, it was in the code. So shouldn't, shall. Very, very important words.

Speaker 3: 11:41

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Speaker 1: 12:21

And then you also mentioned you're talking about I didn't know, they made anti-static carpet. I just learned something new today ESD electrostatic discharge. It wreaks havoc on computers, wreaks havoc on hubs, routers, servers, and so it's really, really. You know we don't want static at all, right? So why don't you go ahead and tell us what are some key benefits for anti-static flooring specifically talking about tiles, because we don't put carpet in our telecom rooms right, and what kind of environments, in the environments where you're going to find low-voltage cabling?

Speaker 2: 12:55

So, believe it or not, a lot of ESD carpet does get into telecom rooms.

Speaker 1: 13:03

A lot. We're not supposed to, though. See, that's where the best practice comes in. The best practice says yeah, carpet no. Should not be putting carpet in.

Speaker 2: 13:18

So this is always of interest to me because years ago one of my customers was Cisco, and Cisco had a huge footprint of buildings in Northern California, in the San Jose area, and they used our ESD carpet in all their burning areas. They had acres of it, and the reason they used it is, first of all, it got rid of static electricity, but it also was a great sound attenuator. So just picture a 40, 50, 60,000 square foot building with a bunch of call them servers, call them telecom systems, but all with intake cooling fans, all operating at the same time. You'd want to walk around there like you're at a heavy metal concert with a set of earplugs metal concert with, you know, a set of earplugs. So for them it was the ideal solution, and I want to just make it clear that there are numerous modes of material that you can use to eliminate static. There's epoxy, there's carpet, anything you can walk on. We can figure out a way to render it into what's loosely called an anti-static floor.

Speaker 2: 14:25

But in the dispatching comm world, esd carpet is actually a really popular choice, not because of it just being carpet, but because of ergonomics to do with sound, and I'll get it out early on. It's not our biggest product. So we're not here to tell you everything gets solved by one solution. But you got to think about problems from the perspective of the people in the space too. So that becomes a challenge for us, because people will say I want it to be anti-slip, I want it to be low maintenance, I want it to get rid of static, I want it to meet standards, I want it to be inexpensive. You know how these laundry lists get put together, right?

Speaker 1: 15:11

Well, I really want to focus on the tiles because, like I said, the TDMM, the Telecommunications Distribution Methods Manual, recommends not to use carpeting and again, recommends not requires. Another key difference there, and I have seen telecom rooms with carpeting in before. My concern with carpeting is the technician or the engineer may not, or the customer may not realize if that carpet static or not. And if you don't put in, you know anti-static carpeting again huge, we've all gotten. We do this as kids, right, We'd walk around and shuffle our feet and we go touch your brother, your sister, right? Well, again, that wreaks havoc. It shows up as common mode issues, differential mode issues, computers rebooting, losing data because of that electrostatic, and those are just the minor problems. The major problems is you can burn out something on a chipset on the motherboard, yeah, the motherboard. There you go.

Speaker 1: 16:10

I almost said mothership, Where's my brain at today? So that's why they really want you to try to use tile. So I'd like to focus today's conversation. If there is electrostatic discharge carpeting out there, because the recommendation is for tiles, I'd kind of like to stay focused more towards tile than carpet per se. Um, like I said, I didn't know that until you said something. Now can you explain what makes what makes a product anti-static? How does it dissipate that electric, and what kind of materials are they using to get that goal?

Speaker 2: 16:44

Okay, so let's talk about tile squares like you would buy at Home Depot, right? So we call that vinyl composition tile VCT is the common term for it. Regular VCT is a static generator and, by the way, what makes something a static generator is that it can't move electricity. So, for example, chuck, if I said to you take this piece of tile, take your outlet apart, take this piece of VCT and go over and touch your electrical outlet, you probably wouldn't be too afraid to do that because you're not afraid to plug your cell phone charger in, right? The reason you're not afraid to do that is because you know the plastic housing on your cell phone charger isn't going to conduct electricity and shock you. What if I asked you to stick a paper clip in the electrical outlet? No, no, it's conductive, exactly. So we need to make things conductive in order to conduct electricity. That means we have to take VCT and put something else in it to get it to discharge static electricity. We can use carbon, we could use carbon, we could use metal, we could use silver and gold, but they're kind of expensive.

Speaker 2: 18:02

Most what we call ESD electrostatic discharge tiles. What we do is we use carbon, we put these little filaments inside the tile, and then we install those tiles with an adhesive that also has carbon in it. So picture a room that's empty and we want to put a floor in there that'll get rid of static electricity. We also want to ground it. So what we'll do is we'll spread a special adhesive on that floor that has carbon in it, and then, if we were to test that floor with an ohmmeter to look for continuity, even before we put the tiles on top of it, we'll have continuity, because what we've essentially done is installed a sticky ground plane. Now, when we put tiles on top of it, one next to the other, next to the other, next to the other, we're building a matrix of materials on top that are all, I guess you could say, electrically connected to the same ground plane, and then we ground the adhesive with a copper strip, usually to an electrical outlet. We can use building steel, but it's usually the AC ground that's most commonly used.

Speaker 2: 19:09

So now we've built a surface that'll accept static charges, but that's not the end of it, because one of the things we have to think about is, if I have a charge on my body and I walk on that floor, can I charge up based on the shoes or footwear that I have on. And that's where it gets tricky Because you know, for example, back to that flight tower, I would not be able to tell flight control personnel you can't wear your shoes anymore, you got to wear this special footwear, right? I have to come up with a solution that I can ground, that I can test with an ohmmeter to prove that it's grounded. But I also want that floor to be very forgiving and allow me to walk on it without accumulating a charge.

Speaker 2: 19:58

So when we look at floors and we talk to our customers, we're asking them really two questions, and those questions are what kind of footwear are you wearing and what's the sensitivity or risk associated with your business? So, to go back to the should and shall for a minute, even if you take those two words off the table, if it's a control room at a nuclear power plant, what's your risk if your system goes down Pretty high, right? I mean, and believe it or not, big risk in gambling resorts. We do a lot of work with people in that industry. So people will say to me do I need to use anti-static flooring? I don't know enough about their equipment because they don't know enough about it to tell them.

Speaker 2: 20:48

Oh, yeah, you have such and such piece of equipment that's sensitive to this voltage. My question is always how much can you afford to have downtime or to have all those problems you just talked about? That's an easy question for most people to answer.

Speaker 1: 21:06

That's a great point because we do a lot of cabling in casinos because those one-armed bandits have basically many computers inside of them, so we run cabling to them and I know this because they're real sensitive to EMI. But, like you said, the risk, right, what's the risk if one machine goes down? Okay, there's not a big impact there, right? Well, to the casino, there is because they're not making money off of one out of 5,000 one-armed bandits. But in the low-voltage world the risk is huge because you could lose your phone service, you can lose your network, you could lose your video surveillance system which is monitoring. Think of banks They've got video monitors that monitor the volts and stuff. Think about prisons they're monitoring the prisoners. There's a huge, huge risk to static and ESD.

Speaker 2: 22:02

There was a study done by ASHRAE. Are you familiar with ASHRAE at all? No, so I always forget exactly what these letters stand for, but it's A-S-H-R-A-E and it's the association of heating, ventilating, air conditioning. And you know, it almost sounds like it would be like a consumer group, but they weigh in heavily on the design of data centers, because data centers obviously generate a tremendous amount of heat and because they generate a tremendous amount of heat, they need air conditioning. And what ends up happening in data centers? Because they're so dry because of the heat generated by computer systems, they need to be air conditioned.

Speaker 2: 22:44

So they've done a number of studies on how could we reduce the requirement for elevated humidity and still control static electricity, because I think everybody knows you don't get as many shocks when you touch a doorknob in Florida as you do in Denver in January. Right, exactly. And what's the variable? It's the humidity, right, right. So in data centers, if they could reduce the humidity, believe it or not, they can lower the cost of operating the data center, because now they're not trying to cool humid air data center, because now they're not trying to cool humid air. But anyway, the long and short of it is, they determined that ESD flooring is a tremendous attribute, and the people in the study that were involved in the study were from all over the world. They were actual scientists and one of their statements was you have to buy a floor anyway, you have to put a floor in anyway. So in this environment, why wouldn't the floor have static control properties? That was basically their sort of takeaway.

Speaker 1: 23:47

Yeah, so for purposes for my industry, low voltage contractors are not going to be installing flooring or anti-static flooring. Right, if that gets put in their, if it gets put in their scope of work, they're going to hire a flooring contractor to do that and then they should specify hey, you need to put in anti-static flooring. That's why I'm having this conversation with you, because most engineers in our industry couldn't tell you. I didn't know that they used carbon. It was in the glue. So you got carbon in the glue and then you got what? Some kind of a copper element sitting on top of that and tiles on top of that.

Speaker 2: 24:29

The only place where we use copper is actually connecting the ground plane, so let's say the room's 50 by 50. That 50 by 50 room, in a few locations we would press part of the 24 inch long piece of copper onto some spot on the adhesive just at the edge of the room up to the electrical outlet, the carbon impregnated adhesive. Think of it as copper itself. As long as the floor has electrical properties, which I described by either adding graphite or carbon to the floor and it touches that adhesive, you've got an electrical path from the top of the floor through the tile to the adhesive, across the adhesive to the copper to ground. You can use carbon because it's cheap or cheaper.

Speaker 1: 25:21

So let me ask you this question what's the expected lifespan of antistatic flooring versus a traditional floor in like a commercial setting?

Speaker 2: 25:30

So in terms of lifespan, as long as it's not a heavy industrial environment, you're actually looking at no difference. The fact that the floor has conductive properties doesn't impact its durability. Now I will tell you. There are technologies for ESD tile that don't have the properties built into the floor. You have to use special polishes on top of them, and we usually end up in a discussion at some point with most people looking at a solution. How do you know when it's time to replace those polishes? Who's going to test them? Because the properties are invisible? Who's going to test them because the properties are invisible? I mean, if I showed you one tile that was an ESD tile, one that wasn't, and I chose them carefully you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The only way to know is to put an ohmmeter on the floor and measure electrical continuity.

Speaker 1: 26:34

Just a regular ohmmeter, like the one I got in my tool bag right now. So you need a special probe for it.

Speaker 2: 26:40

Okay.

Speaker 1: 26:42

The one you have in your toolbox has little points Right.

Speaker 2: 26:44

Okay, the one we use to test the floor. The probes have to be two and a half inches in diameter and they have to be five pounds in weight.

Speaker 1: 26:54

A surface area contact.

Speaker 2: 26:55

Exactly, surface area contact, and that means you're probably going to want a kind of beefy ohmmeter, because your typical volt ohmmeter is probably going to crash because of the load of those two probes, because it just doesn't have the output. So those probes, by the way, have been around since the 1950s. They're called NFPA probes. We've been testing floors the same way for 70 years.

Speaker 3: 27:22

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Speaker 1: 28:33

So let's talk about the installation process, right? So this is really geared for maybe the project manager who's looking over the show? So let's talk about the installation process, right? So this is really geared for maybe the project manager who's looking over the project. They're doing regular inspections on a project. They're out checking on the crew in the field somewhere. They see the tile guys putting in the anti-static flooring in the telecom room, right? Or maybe I do have a lot of people listening to my show who have their small low voltage companies where they might only be just them or or fireless people and this might be something that they might want to do because they did this before somewhere else. You know the tile or carpeting or whatever. Right, let's talk about the installation process. You mentioned already that there's glue, so I'm imagining the glue would be laid out the same way you would glue with a regular anti-static floor. Correct, same process.

Speaker 2: 29:28

So if you've ever watched somebody install a tile in the bathroom, or maybe at a grocery store where they're doing a repair, you'll see a tool they call a trowel. Right, it's got little teeth. You drip some adhesive on the floor and you spread it with the trowel. You let it dry for a certain amount of time In some cases, like we have a glue that you let dry completely until it's sticky, and then you put your dials on top of it. So it's the process of installation. Any flooring contractor that knows how to use a T-square and a chalk line and knows how to cut a tile. For them, the process is no different than installing regular tile, and there are even free-floating interlocking tiles now.

Speaker 1: 30:10

I was going to ask you was gluing the only option no.

Speaker 2: 30:15

The industry is changing Because of labor costs and floor preparation, and you're repairing concrete. There's actually a very big interest these days in free floating floors, and, if you can picture, like a dovetail sort of an arrangement, almost like the kind of like floors you see in a gym, those black rubber floors yes, yes, these big gyms, except you know something pretty that would look like you could. You could be around it all day long, you know it looks clean, but there's a lot of, there's a lot of different ways to install these floors. They do all need to be grounded, though, and that means that at some point along the perimeter of the room, you need that copper strip.

Speaker 1: 30:58

Well, that's perfectly. In my next question A couple of questions. You know, for as far as bonding that floor to a ground, you already mentioned the one method of tying it to the electrical receptacle. I only know this because I watched your video, or maybe maybe one of your competitors videos, I don't know. I watched, like several videos. It's a copper thing, maybe what two inches wide, I guess or so, and it literally comes up the wall and then you put a tiny little hole in it and then you run the screw that holds the receptacle to the box through that copper base and then you you recommend, somebody recommended using metal plates as well. That's, that's one way of bonding it to the ground, right that?

Speaker 1: 31:36

is another, yeah, another method, and I saw this at the big c learning academy in tampa. They, they came up and then they went to a. They did a. Um, they did a split bolt to a bonding conductor to a bus bar. Now our industry is huge on installing bus bars because we got to run conductors from that bus bar to the rack to bond that rack to a ground and then usually that bus bar is either tied to structural steel or maybe its own independent ground that's been installed, driven in per the NEC meets 25 ohms resistance or less. All that fun, good stuff to go let's talk a little bit about. Is there any other methods besides those two?

Speaker 2: 32:17

We just finished a job. It happened to be for a manufacturing facility where we used the I-beams in the building.

Speaker 1: 32:23

Okay, so they sanded the paint off the.

Speaker 2: 32:25

I-beams, and then they attached the copper to the I-beam. They drilled and tapped, used a screw and a washer, and the reason they did that, by the way, is the I-beams did not have electrical outlets on them and the building was 250,000 square feet in size, so it was pretty far.

Speaker 1: 32:48

You know we want to have a ground approximately every 1,000 square feet. That actually brings a great question. So for every 1,000 square feet? So most telecom rooms are going to be 10 by 11. So that sounds to me like there are big ones, don't get me wrong, but most telecom rooms are small. So that sounds to me like it's just going to be one attachment point to a ground.

Speaker 2: 33:07

Right, and I usually advocate two, and I'll tell you why. It's not because you need them, it's because at some point in the life of that room, someone may visit that room and wonder what that is and why it's there.

Speaker 1: 33:18

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 33:19

We all know about that.

Speaker 1: 33:20

Two is one, one is none. Exactly, dad always used to say that Always have a backup son, always have something, because something will happen. It just will. That's very cool. So let's talk about the maintenance of these things. So let's talk. This is going to be geared towards, maybe, like the service tech who's going out to the customer a of times a year doing work or whatever what. What kind of maintenance is required for anti-static flooring to ensure that it's still conductive to a ground source?

Speaker 2: 33:53

So are we talking about a manned space or usually an unmanned space?

Speaker 1: 33:57

Most of the time unmanned.

Speaker 2: 33:58

Okay, so if the space is unmanned it makes a difference, because now we're not dealing with traffic affecting the floor aesthetically, right? So just to back up, because it plays into your question, when that floor gets installed ideally after it's installed someone usually the supplier of the floor arranges for the floor to be tested. So now, you have a baseline.

Speaker 2: 34:25

So, for example, I mentioned that process where some products rely on a floor finish. A lot of times that floor finish doesn't get applied because flooring contractors a lot of times don't apply flooring finishes so it never gets put in. So A you want the floor to be tested when it's new. If the floor has permanent properties and it's never because we're talking tile it never gets waxed. Those properties aren't going to go anywhere. So if it's unmanned and it's a permanent product that even while it's still in the box has these conductive properties still in the box, has these conductive properties I'm not as concerned about that person coming in to do maintenance, having to look at that floor. The option's always there. But the most important thing I can tell anyone that buys an anti-static floor is write in your specification something like this Upon completion, the manufacturer or the manufacturer's representative shall test the floor per ASTM F-150 and provide the results in writing.

Speaker 1: 35:31

That gets you where you need to be Nice. I like that. What about data centers? Let's talk about data centers and still the maintenance things. Is there more concern for maintenance in a data center than a telecom room?

Speaker 2: 35:45

No, not really. You know it's funny. We're actually doing a job for a big data center group right now and we've actually brought up maintenance a couple of times to them and at least in this particular instance I'm not getting the feedback that I would get from like a manufacturing operation where they would build the equipment that goes into the data center. You know, normally once a data center is operational if they move heavy systems, like some of these big Dell systems and IBM systems, they're using some kind of a motorized trolley which is pretty easy on the floor. If they're moving a system, you know they've got to worry about the casters damaging the floor. But that's something that doesn't have to do with time. That's something that the floor has to be specified properly to begin with to handle those weight loads.

Speaker 2: 36:42

It's not about endurance over time. So if the right floor is put in to handle the weight loads to begin with, their maintenance isn't really much more than a clean room, which, as you know, doesn't have a lot of dirt in it otherwise it wouldn't call it a clean room Right, right?

Speaker 1: 36:57

Can anti-static flooring? Does it have to be? Can it be installed over an existing floor Like, let's say, you have? In our industry? A lot of times what happens is the telecom room is usually the last thing that's thought about, because customers they're geared about, you know, building out the offices and the modular furniture areas, stuff like that, and they don't even think about the telecom room until an RCDD says, hey, we need a 10 by 11 room. So they go find a, you know a broom closet or something. Let's say it may already have some existing flooring in it. Can antistatic flooring be put on top of that or does that have to be scraped down to, you know?

Speaker 2: 37:36

the concrete or whatever the base structure is for the antistatic flooring to work Absolutely can go over the old floor. And the way we sort of state this is, we cannot tell you, we can't guarantee that the old floor's bond is perfect, right? So if the tiles are curled up because you know, maybe they had a flood three years earlier, you know that you wouldn't cover that anyway. If the old floor is flat and in decent shape, it's actually a good decision. Because if you remove that floor and there is equipment in there already, you've got to shut down, You've got to get rid of the old adhesive. You might discover that that's an old room and maybe at one time there was even asbestos tile in there, because, you know, up until the late 60s asbestos is a very common component. So sometimes, from a restoration perspective, you solve a lot of problems by going over the floor. That can be done with a free-floating floor or with certain adhesives. But yeah, it's a very common tactic and it saves money.

Speaker 1: 38:39

You mentioned just a few minutes ago one standard I can't remember what is off the top of my head. Our industry is driven by standards. Matter of fact, I got a complete set of telecom standards. Actually, it's in the other room. That book's literally like this it's three inches thick. It's a huge thing. So we have lots of standards, lots of best practice. I was kind of glad to hear you say that the anti-static flooring industry has that too, because that tells me that you guys are really really looking at safety, performance and uniform installation practice, testing practice. What kind of standards guides the anti-static flooring industry so?

Speaker 2: 39:16

there are test methods and standards. So there are test methods and standards. So most of the test methods for testing antist is built around designing a static control program for manufacturing electronic devices. So a lot of the things that they require and a lot of their parameters are specific to touching components with your fingers, and I just want to get this out there.

Speaker 2: 39:56

Most of the time, telecom systems are not as vulnerable to an ESD event as the components that are on those circuit boards. So when they're building microelectronic parts or they're building circuit boards, they need to go way beyond where your clientele, your audience, would want to go. But so there's the ESD association. They have standards and test methods. Some of them might apply to what we're talking about, astm, and everybody knows who ASTM is. Astm, for years and years, has had a test method for testing the resistive properties of a floor using those five pound weights. By the way, the history of that goes all the way back to when they used conductive floors in operating rooms to prevent explosions when people were administered ether as the anesthesia.

Speaker 1: 40:50

So yeah.

Speaker 2: 40:53

And, by the way, I bring that up because when you install a floor, obviously you want to conduct electricity. But you know for your audience, I think everyone would agree if the power went out in your house and you had a flood in the room where your circuit breakers are, you probably wouldn't stand in water and start flipping circuit breakers, right? No, so we don't want floors that are too conductive.

Speaker 2: 41:16

We want to have floors that conduct electricity but conduct it at a controlled rate. Astm has a minimum resistance requirement and I don't know if you want to. You know if you're listening to this you want to write this down. But that number is 25,000 ohms and that's kind of a sacred number in my industry because it was calculated all the way back into the 1950s when the NFPA and underwriter laboratories and all these organizations had to think about what floor might be too conductive to use in a room that has a defibrillator.

Speaker 2: 41:54

Oh wow, I didn't think about that, yeah exactly so we want something that gets rid of electricity, so we don't want plastic on the floor, right, but at the same time we don't want the floor itself to be made out of copper. Copper is OK to connect the floor, but we want the floor to have some amount of resistance in it.

Speaker 1: 42:12

So that's the twenty five thousand is the is the same. Here's a funny story for you. I don't tell this very often.

Speaker 1: 42:20

I used to be a firefighter EMT many, many, many years ago and I ran a call in PG County, maryland. I ran a call at Bird Stadium. Well, I don't even know if it's called Bird anymore, it's the football stadium for University of Maryland, right, somebody was having a heart attack. Now at the time I was just an EMTA, I wasn't a paramedic. So was having a heart attack? Now, at the time I was just an EMTA, I wasn't a paramedic. So we get there and a paramedic showed up and most football stadiums they got the metal bleachers that you sit on and it was raining because it was typical November weather. In December this lady was having a heart attack and the paramedic used the defib on the patient on the metal bench while it was wet and shocked everybody on that bench, everybody on that bench.

Speaker 1: 43:06

So in the low-voltage world, when we drive a ground rod right, the code tells us we have to be 25 ohms or less. So for us the magic number is the closer to zero, the better. Explain to me that 25,000, is it a lower number better? Is it a higher number better. What's the theory behind that 25,000 ohm?

Speaker 2: 43:26

Okay, so let's just to put it all together that 25 ohms connection to ground, that's the guarantee that what you're actually going to is a good connection to earth. Okay, that doesn't have anything to do with the floor.

Speaker 2: 43:45

The floor, if I if I if I build a floor with a certain amount of electrical resistance, what I'm, what I'm doing is I'm I'm controlling. I mean, think of it this way I'm controlling the decay of electricity through that floor. And the best example I can give you is there's a lab that I work with and this is not a required test. It should be, but unfortunately it isn't. Anytime we look at new products or new product designs, one of the things we do is we have this lab connect the flooring material to a voltage source and then ground the floor but we read we measure the current electrical current that the floor can support and for the most part this is always the case. But for the most part the amount of resistance that's in the floor is a good predictor of what that electrical current will look like.

Speaker 2: 44:39

The reason I say most of the time it's a good predictor is a lot of these anti-static flooring materials are multilayered and, depending upon how, when voltage meets the floor, if it finds one of the more conductive layers in the floor, or call it a hotspot, all bets are off. So that's one of the reasons we do this testing, because we know that voltage doesn't kill. Current kills and there's all sorts of charts. You can go on line and see where they'll tell you how much electrical current you say ouch, how much you can't move your arms, how much you can't move anything ever again. So we try to think about that. So when we look at floors, we don't want to just be at 25,000. We probably want to be no less than 100,000, because you never design anything. Right next to the point of failure, you want to have a buffer. If you're building a bridge that had to hold a thousand pounds, you wouldn't build it to hold a thousand and one. You'd probably want it to hold 5,000 pounds.

Speaker 1: 45:40

Yeah, You're going to want at least like a 2.5 safety factor or something.

Speaker 2: 45:44

Exactly so. When we look at floors, we have this thing we kind of call the sweet spot. I actually made a graph because I used to play golf and you always know when you've hit a ball perfectly, you hit the sweet spot and maybe play tennis. Anyway, the sweet spot in my mind is a buffer in between what we call the limits at both ends, so the limit at the upper end. By the way, this is kind of important. I told you the lower end is 25,000 ohms, the upper end is a billion ohms and those of you who like to think in exponents-.

Speaker 1: 46:17

Oh, you got to do like this one billion ohms. And those of you who like to think in exponents oh, you got to do it like this One billion ohms.

Speaker 2: 46:21

Yes, so it's 10 to the ninth place a lot of zeros.

Speaker 2: 46:26

All right. So you don't want to be up there either, because now you're approaching a static generator. So we kind of tell people no more than 100 million, no less than 100,000 is your sweet spot, no less than 100,000 is your sweet spot. And that amount of resistance I'm not saying it's safe, because there's a lot of foolish things people do with electricity You're stacking the deck more in your favor. You mentioned liability a couple of minutes ago. I wrote an article years ago and I actually reached out to a well-known liability attorney. He writes for Incompliance Magazine. I thought it seems like a good resource. What he told me about this kind of stuff is meeting standards isn't always enough. If there's emerging technology or information that suggests exceeding standards, you probably want to think about doing that. It's a lot easier to defend and in a litigious world where we're making recommendations, representations, you try to take that into consideration.

Speaker 1: 47:32

Love that. So if somebody wants to learn more about your product or anti-static flooring, how can they get in touch with you or your company? So the easiest way.

Speaker 2: 47:42

So I mean we have a website. Obviously we have a contact list, but Staticworks is spelled kind of unusual. It's W-O-R-X like x-ray. So my name's Dave. Dave at Staticworks is one way. Info at Staticworks If you find us online at staticworkscom, info at Static Works If you find us online at staticworkscom, any one of our staff will be able to answer the kinds of questions I just answered for you, chuck.

Speaker 1: 48:08

Dave, thank you for coming on the show and clearing up the air about anti-static flooring.

Speaker 4: 48:13

I certainly appreciate your time. That's it for this episode of today's podcast. We hope you were able to learn something. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss out on future content. Also, leave a rating so we can help even more people learn about telecommunications. Until next time, be safe.