Above: Ness Crane arrives to lift our battery cabinets.
As previously noted, yesterday was a fully packed day of activity here at digital.forest. The crane was here again, this time to lift our new UPS' battery cabinets into the datacenter. Additionally our electrical contractors, VECA were here to pull the electrical wire runs for the new UPS and its sub-panel in Datacenter Three.
Thankfully it was a beautiful day, unlike the drizzle earlier in the week...
Above: The view south towards Mt. Rainier from the roof. On the right are our HVAC units 2 & 3.
We captured the crane lifting one of the battery cabinets on video:
That is about 10 minutes of footage compressed down to 2 minutes and 35 seconds. The crane operator was very smooth and carefully slow, so if we'd present the video scaled in real-time it would be pretty dull to watch.
Above: The second battery cabinet arrives.
Above: Tim Beyer and Shawn Hammer check out the batteries
Above: Both cabinets safe and sound inside the UPS room, waiting to be moved to their final locations.
Congrats to our Facility Manager Kevin Teker for successfully landing another big shipment with the help of Ness Crane.
Meanwhile, as the preparations for the crane work were underway, the boys from VECA Electric were over in Datacenter Three making preparations to pull cable. The cable itself is very impressive, being a bit over an inch thick. As we noted yesterday each spool is custom wound with custom made cable cut to fit our facility. Four spools in all, two for the run from the UPS room to Datacenter Three, then two from our main electrical panel to the UPS room, one main feed, and another bypass feed. The latter allows us to continue to power the facility should we need to turn the UPS off, such as for maintenance. (If any of you follow the price of commodities such as copper, you know that this is a phenomenally expensive bit of work - let's just say you could trade a few feet of this cable for a tankful of gasoline. I joked with the electricians as they trimmed a few inches off that they could buy me lunch with what was lying on the floor.)
These cable spools weigh many thousands of pounds and pulling this cable through conduit is not as easy as giving it a tug. VECA brought a special cable pulling machine, which they bolted to the floor of the UPS room in front of the UPS itself.
Above: The cable puller, bolted to the floor. The rope has been fished through the conduit from the other end of the building. At the far end they strip the cables and bolt them onto the end loop of the rope, then use the puller to s l o w l y drag the cables off the spools and through the conduit.
Once things got moving it looked like this at the UPS room end of things:
...and this at the far end in Datacenter Three:
VECA was successful in pulling one set of cables before the crane arrived for the battery cabinet delivery. Pulling continued through today and will hopefully finish up tomorrow. More updates coming soon, so stay tuned.
