Floor Live Load in Electrical Room 1

[ChiEngr]

Hi Everyone,

A portion of a new floor structure I am designing is an electrical room with some equipment exceeding 250 psf. My question is, outside of the equipment footprint, does anybody have any resources for design "aisle" live loads? The rooms will likely only be accessed by maintenance workers. I am thinking of using 50 psf to be conservative, but I have no justification for this value and was wondering if anybody else has any recommendations. Thanks in advance for your help!

 

[CDLD]

I believe we use about 250 psf for the entire electrical room floor.
But you can also run a second check with the weight of the equipment and the aisle loads.
50 or 100 psf seems reasonable for the aisles.

 

[straub46]

I would use 250 psf for the whole room. How does the equipment get into the room? Probably through the aisles? Can you guarantee which equipment will and won't be there during installation or future replacement?

Go Bucks!

 

[Enable]

I agree with straub46. All the building electrical rooms I have been in are not that great in size. It would take a large room to justify differential loading over various parts of the slab. If we're at some sort of enclosed substation, then okay.

 

[JLNJ]

I would look at the actual equipment if you can. Maybe 250+ for the slab, 225 for the beams and 175-200 for the columns, depending on trib area and framing orientation.

 

[canwesteng]

The equipment comes in on rollers and will be supported on the slab anytime it is replaced. I've only ever seen the distributed load applied to the entire floor. Another thing to watch for is the load from cable vault, if there is one below, as generally that exceeds the 10 psf electrical allowance used elsewhere in plants.

 

[JoelTXCive]

I concur and would assume the 250 psf over the whole floor. Equipment gets moved around, needs change etc...

Also, depending on the overall building layout and your beams/slab setup; I sometimes assume the full 250 load on half the room and no load on the other half just to put regions that are normally in positive moment into negative moment. (they might move all the equipment to 1 side for painting in the future...who knows?)