Stop construction dust before it damages your critical IT.
Protect IT Equipment During Refurbishment with ProtectIT™, our specialist contamination-control system designed to protect live IT environments from construction dust and airborne particulate during refurbishment and retrofit projects.
How We Protect IT Equipment During Refurbishment
ProtectIT™ protects live IT equipment during refurbishment or retrofit projects. One of the greatest — and most underestimated — threats to a data centre or server room during this work is construction dust. These microscopic particles are abrasive, conductive and highly damaging to fans, circuit boards and power supplies.
Refurbishment work produces vast quantities of fine particulate contamination. Contractors rarely understand how sub-micron particles behave; even careful isolation lets dust bypass makeshift barriers and spread through positive-pressure airflow into data halls.
Plaster dust is particularly dangerous. Its critical relative humidity is lower than the environment in most data centres, so it absorbs moisture from the air, becomes damp, and drives corrosion (sulphur and copper creep), ionic migration and permanent electronic damage.
ProtectIT™ can help mitigate this problem. Protecting Mission Critical IT Equipment.
- Silica-based dust from concrete, mortar and sandstone.
- Low-toxicity plaster and plasterboard dusts — as fine as 0.3 μm.
- Sub-micron particles travelling freely through HVAC and ventilation.
- Plaster dust absorbing moisture, driving corrosion and ionic migration on PCBs.
Equipment manufacturers also specify environmental cleanliness requirements for critical IT infrastructure. NVIDIA, for example, specifies ISO 14644-1 Class 8 cleanliness for the operating environment of its ConnectX-8 equipment.
STEP 01
Enclose the zone
Specialist containment isolates either the live IT equipment or the construction work area.
STEP 02
HEPA-filtered pressure
0.3μm air scrubbers create positive pressure over IT (keeping dust out) or negative pressure over works (trapping dust in).
STEP 03
Monitor & verify
Real-time particulate and temperature monitoring provides continuous evidence that environmental conditions remain controlled throughout the project.
STEP 04
Clean, test & certify
Final airborne particle readings confirm environmental conditions following the works. A post-works technical clean and ISO 14644-1 Class 8 testing provide documented evidence of the final environmental condition.
Trained and experienced on complex systems including Quantum Scalar Tape Libraries. Using controlled methods appropriate for sensitive IT equipment.
Proven across the UK
ProtectIT has safeguarded large enterprise data halls, high-density server rooms and sensitive communications/control rooms — including a large tape library at a UK university, kept fully operational while a comms-room wall was removed. To date, no contamination of the protected IT equipment has occurred.
Managed containment
We can supply a contamination-control manager on-site — running airlock doors, providing HEPA-filtered vacuums for contractors, monitoring particulate levels, maintaining pressures and air scrubbers, and holding temperature. After the works we clean, take proving air-particulate readings against ISO 14644-1 Class 8 (3,520,000 particles at 0.5μm), then remove the enclosure and hand the room back.