Server room cooling in Ilford

How warm can a server room safely get?

Between 18 and 27°C, and ideally no warmer than 25°C, according to Server Room Environments, which also suggests relative humidity of 45% to 50%. Where a UPS with VRLA batteries shares the space, it suggests 20 to 25°C for their sake. Your equipment makers' own limits come first where they are tighter. A cupboard that climbs past 27°C every summer afternoon is outside all of those ranges. Source: Server Room Environments.

How is the cooling load for a rack worked out?

Mostly from the power the equipment draws, because that power becomes heat: Server Room Environments' example is a 900W server giving out 900W. To that total of servers, switches, storage and UPS losses, its method adds lighting, an allowance of 400 BTU for each person working in the room, any sun through a window, and a safety factor for future expansion. At 3,412 BTU an hour to the kilowatt, a rack drawing a steady 2kW needs about 6,800 BTU an hour of cooling before any margin (our sum). The guide itself calls its method a starting point, to be settled by a survey, and readings from your UPS or power strips make ours quicker. Source: Server Room Environments.

Why not rely on the building's air conditioning or a fan?

Because neither works when the rack needs it most. Office systems go off at night and at weekends, and they respond to a sensor out among the desks, not in the cupboard. A fan only moves outside air, and outside air is often too warm: summer 2026 was provisionally the warmest on record in the UK, peaking at 38.2°C at Hartpury College on 13 August, and the Met Office's long-run averages for Greenwich, about six miles away, put the typical July afternoon at 23.75°C. A dedicated unit with its own controller keeps the room in range whatever the office or the weather is doing. Sources: Met Office, summer 2026; Met Office, Greenwich averages.

What backup and alarms should a server room have?

At the very least, a high-temperature alert sent to the phone or inbox of someone who can act. Beyond that, the design follows what downtime costs you:

• a second unit on standby that takes over automatically if the first fails;
• the cooling on its own electrical circuit, so a fault elsewhere does not take it down;
• a condensate pump with an alarm, where the water cannot drain by gravity;
• a yearly service on both units, so the standby is known to work.

A small firm with one switch and a storage box needs less than a business holding client data on site.

Is the server cooling included in a TM44 inspection?

It can be. The TM44 guidance counts all the air conditioning units in one building controlled by the same person as one system, and says cooling for applications such as server rooms can be inspected. So add the server unit's output to the office units before deciding you are under the 12kW threshold; above it, inspections can be no more than five years apart. Where that leaves a business in our area is covered on the Ilford air conditioning homepage. Source: GOV.UK.