Office conversion (warning dial up users!)

[electronicsuk]

I'm pretty new here, and seen as there doesn't seem to be anywhere specific for introducing yourself here seems as good a place as any. I'm an electrical/electronic engineer by trade, although willing to give almost any DIY work a go.

Biggest DIY project to date has been the conversion of an old room at the back of the garage into an office, pictures below...

The room used to have a dividing wall which went straight down the centre of the window. The front half had a slightly worse for wear laminate floor and was the walls had been cladded with chipboard and then painted, the colours suggested it might have been a children's play room. The back area was simply bare walls and used as a general junk storage area. Above pics are after removing the dividing wall and cladding but before chucking out the old flooring.

Above pictures are after attaching timbers to wall and beginning to plasterboard. Also installed air conditioning condenser units onto the flat roof at the same time, didn't want to be dealing with any unexpected leaks after boarding the ceiling!

Plasterboarding almost complete at this stage with the exception of the ceiling, and most of the electrical and data cables have been run.

Sadly my plastering skills leave a lot to be desired, it took a far bit of sanding to bring everything to an acceptable finish ready for painting.

Didn't get chance to take any more pictures between plastering and the finished product. All the electrics are connected, racks have been fixed to walls, alarm fitted, ceiling and walls painted, coving fixed and painted, new laminate flooring laid and skirting attached to walls and painted. The room is still in need of an internal door and a new external door, but that is on hold for the time being due to some major work in the garden!

 

[RF Lighting]

Looks very nice.

Have you notified your LABC about all the works they would be interested in such as the wiring?

Also with all those computers about did you install a socket circuit with high integrity earthing?

 

[electronicsuk]

Hi RF. The work was carried out pre Part P, therefore the electrical work has not been notified.

On the power side of things, no, there are no special earthing arrangements. While there are a lot of computers kicking around on the desks in the pictures, they aren't all in use. The two 19" racks are fed by a pair of 16A CEE17 sockets on the wall each back to their own 16A breaker, these being linked into a C20 rackmount distribution unit in the rack with appropriate earth bonding internally.

 

[skotl]

I've worked in data centres with less attention to detail

Looks good - now I'm just off to look at my own home office in envy

 

[connieboy]

Very nice project there.Just wondering mate where you got your air conditioning condenser units from and how much if you dont mind me asking, been looking for something similer for my loft conversion (very hot up there)
many thanks
Con

 

[electronicsuk]

Very nice project there.Just wondering mate where you got your air conditioning condenser units from and how much if you dont mind me asking, been looking for something similer for my loft conversion (very hot up there)
many thanks
Con

Hi Con. The air conditioning came as two complete sets, each with a condenser (outdoor) and evaporator (indoor) unit. I seem to remember paying about £160 per set from a company called DD Heating on eBay, although this was out-of-season so expect prices to be higher now we're heading into summer.

Oh, and just for the record, they are heat pump units meaning they can be used for both cooling and heating. Can't see the heating being used much, the room has enough computers and thermal insulation that even in winter when outdoor temperatures are sub-zero the room still quite happily maintains above 20deg C ambient!

 

[2scoops0406]

Blade servers ?

 

[Steve]

were the air con units professionally fitted and commissioned?

 

[electronicsuk]

Blade servers ?

Haha, I wish. Working down the contents of the left rack that are visible in the picture, there's an old 17" CRT, a FortiGate hardware firewall, 16 port KVM switch and then a couple of dual processor desktop machines on a sliding rail.

Crafty, I installed the air conditioning myself. It wasn't one of the quick connect systems, but was supplied with copper pipes pre cut, lagged and terminated that are attached in a way similar to plumbing compression joints. No idea how it worked but the installation instructions didn't call for a vacuum compressor, the system somehow evacuates air in the pipes itself.

 

[Tim 77]

Hi RF. The work was carried out pre Part P, therefore the electrical work has not been notified.

Had a stash of old colours?!

 

[jeeves]

It looks very nice

Excuse my noseyness, but what are all the computers for?

And in the bottom picture of the patch panel, what are the coax for? I guess it's cctv but there seem to be a lot, surely not networking?

 

[Spark123]

Hi RF. The work was carried out pre Part P, therefore the electrical work has not been notified.

Had a stash of old colours?!

I dunno, but he maybe should have removed the date stamp from the incriminating evidence before uploading it

 

[electronicsuk]

It looks very nice
Excuse my noseyness, but what are all the computers for?

And in the bottom picture of the patch panel, what are the coax for? I guess it's cctv but there seem to be a lot, surely not networking?

The computers currently in there are part of an over-engineered home network, there's a roaming profile and DHCP server, fileserver, streaming media (SageTV) server, and an Asterisk PBX machine if I can ever get the damn software working.

The Coax cables bring TV and cable into the office for the SageTV server and cable modem, and patch between the small racks on the walls. They're just blank 1U 19" panels that I drilled and fitted panel mount F connectors to. They aren't all in use, but it makes sense to future-proof and run more cable than you can ever imagine using!

I dunno, but he maybe should have removed the date stamp from the incriminating evidence before uploading it

Trust someone to be a smart-a***!

 

[jeeves]

an Asterisk PBX machine if I can ever get the damn software working.

Have you looked at Trixbox (used to be Asterisk@Home), it's basically CD you can download that installs the operating system, Asterisk, and lots of other web-interface type things that make it easy to setup incoming/outgoing lines, extensions and just about anything you could want. It's very good.

 

[racket]

Crafty, I installed the air conditioning myself. It wasn't one of the quick connect systems, but was supplied with copper pipes pre cut, lagged and terminated that are attached in a way similar to plumbing compression joints. No idea how it worked but the installation instructions didn't call for a vacuum compressor, the system somehow evacuates air in the pipes itself.

Yeah right, there seems to be a strong smell of bull here