Commercial premesis, computers, RCD or not to RCD?

[NellyManjaro]

As the title suggests I am doing an EICR for a commercial premises this morning.

I haven't looked at the job yet, it was a kind of "just come do what you need to do" job. It is an accountants which obviously means quite a few computers and I do believe they have a 3 phase supply but only uses 2 because the shop next door has the other (from what the client understands)

Now my question is because he has told me both CU's are 3036's... do I need to have the circuits RCD protected? I know he's happy to upgrade both units, I already suggested RCBO's and got the thumbs up but computers.... RCD's..... dont mix well as I'm aware?

I do believe that the computers are plugged into socket outlets and some of the cables are sunk into the wall so only trunking in certain places. But the office is fairly old

C2 on domestic for bathroom circuits and downstairs sockets but commercial downstairs sockets? Much more unlikely but potentially I suppose. Client is happy for RCBO's but can I fit them with computers say 8 computers per floor and 3 floors

Thanks for any assistance with this

 

[timhoward]

But things like the server room don't want it

You will likely find UPS units in the server room, powering racks, providing isolation in any case.

 

[Lister1987]

What difference will using a non standard socket make the Regulations do not make allowances for this, it is a socket outlet.

Oeam from a control POV, reducing the chances of something external being plugged in. Regs probably don't account for it as a control measure bit it's plausible

 

[catdog1121]

If its a genuine server room you might find that there are racks and each rack has two power distribution units, fed from two different circuits connected via commando sockets (so your not talking normal sockets) , as an ex IT engineer if you want redundancy then all but the really low end servers have the option for two or more PSU's, some of the blade systems we used a lot had 6 power supplies and you could lose upto 4 of them depending on the number of servers...

Power supplies in servers because of the heat etc commonly caused tripping, just ask a big bank when I started as an IT engineer, there was a faulty PSU, to test the psu was faulty not the cable or PDU etc I connected a spare power cable from the other PDU and plugged it into the faulty PSU to confirm that the PSU was actually bad before ordering a new one.... Well you see what I had not seen was that the faulty PSU had shorted taking out the circuit breaker rendering one of the two PDU's with no power, not a problem the servers carried on with the other PDU, that was until I connected that to the bad PSU, a big flash and bang later I tripped the other circuit breaker to the other PDU and took down all the servers in the rack, they controlled hundreds of ATM machines which all temporarily went down... I learnt a lesson that day that I never forgot and thankfully after a quick reset of the breaker everything came back up..

Anyway my point is until you get there you wont know what you are dealing with..