Data Center Ceiling Grid Prefabrication

Unistrut Ceiling Grids have been a popular system in the design of data centers for many years. The Unistrut Ceiling Grid is an ideal product to create an interstitial secondary support structure for the electrical bus ducts, cable trays, fire suppression piping, or other standard MEP systems. The Unistrut Slotted Channel Framing is the ideal material to construct a support grid for several reasons. The Unistrut Channel is offered in many different standard sizes from 13/16″ to 3-1/4″ Deep Back-to-Back. The wide range of channel profiles allows Unistrut channel to handle spans between threaded rods up to 8′ and uniform design loads from 5PSF to 50PSF. Unistrut is also an ideal product for Ceiling Grid Systems due to the continuous slot in the Unistrut profile. The continuous slot allows for connections at any point without welding. Many hyper-scale data centers have standardized Unistrut Systems into their typical designs worldwide.

Unistrut Midwest has been a part of many large data center projects throughout our history. Most data center ceiling grid systems will utilize repeatable components throughout the design. Some common repeatable components would be the main rails of the ceiling grid, filler rails, drops for hot aisle containment, or trapezes to support cable tray. Unistrut Midwest is uniquely positioned to offer contractors more than just materials on data center projects. We can analyze the design and determine which parts of a grid design could be pre-fabricated to reduce man hours on site. We will look at a few common pre-fabrication options in the data center ceiling grids.

Unistrut Ceiling Grid Main Rails.

The Unistrut Ceiling Grid Main Rails would be the Unistrut member that connect to the building structure. Typically threaded rod or Unistrut drops will connect only to Unistrut channel in the grid in one direction. Unistrut will pre-fabricate these main rails with fittings to receive the all thread drops, cross connections for the filler rails, or splices. The relatively simple act of pre-loading main rails can save hundreds of man hours in the field.

Unistrut Trapezes

Electrical conduit and cable trays use standard Unistrut Trapeze all throughout data centers. Typically a trapeze would be (2) Rod Drops and (1-3) Layers of Unistrut Channel forming a “U” Shaped Support for the conduit or cable tray. These supports will typically occur every 6-10′ along a row of servers and be identical within a row. Unistrut can pre-cut and assemble the Unistrut trapezes off site to reduce waste and man hours by offering a finished product instead of raw materials.

Unistrut Hot Aisle Containment Supports

Unistrut Metal Framing can be used to create a frame for hot aisle containment panels. The drops made from Unistrut will allow you to support both the hot aisle containment panels and electrical components in the cold aisle with a single support. Since most hot aisles will utilize the same configuration, Unistrut can create repeatable drops that will be cut to size, pre-loaded, and pre-assembled. The hot aisle containment drops arrive bundles by type and reduce on site cutting and assembly. The pre-fabrication of hot aisle containment supports will eliminate field cutting and reduce man hours.

Unistrut Midwest can review your project to see if pre-fabrication makes sense to help lower costs on the project. For more fabrication services, check here: Unistrut Fabrication Services

For more information on Unistrut Ceiling Grids, check here: Unistrut Ceiling Grids