Need some advice on new server room

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James2324

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Hi,

i run a few different businesses from home and I thought I'd ask around on here before I call another electrician out for a second opinion.

ive just had a seperate consumer unit added as a sub panel from my main 200a breaker to a newly built building on my land which is going to be used as for commercial servers. 

I run up to 30 servers at a time each with a 600w power supply. I resell webhosting to small business and a lot of other stuff.  I host a lot of VPN servers which get a heck of a lot of traffic so my severs are always busy. Traffic flowing from all over the world. 

I called a local electrician out last week to get the electrical installed for the whole warehouse he added all the sockets I needed however what really concerns me is fire safety so I made sure I triple checked with him informing him that in total I could be using 11000 watts and want to make sure I have room to expand aswell. 

This is a fully functioning business so i so I know I need a lot of watts to run all this however I'm no electrician.

i checked the width of the cable he used from the consumer unit to the sub panel which is only a couple of meters due to the consumer unit being on my far wall and new outhouse 2m away from the main building. 

The width is 13.5mm and after looking around converts to 6mm2 CSA.

is this size cable really enough to be constantly running this many watts? 

Im calling out another electrician this week either way to be safe but I figured several opinions on here couldn't hurt 

cheers 

 
Yes it says 50a breaker but everything I have read said it is unsafe to run a breaker at any more than 80% of its capacity

 
At a different site. Was a commercial warehouse all rented. They had a commercial consumer unit so it's completely different I believe.   I have 25 acres so it's cheaper for me to move and work from home 

servers arent here yet I need everything checked out and definitely safe first 

 
It doesn't say. Supply to distribution board n/a 

only to be completed if the DB is not connected. Directly to the origin?

I have an RCD setup on the main panel rated at 80A

 
How do I check ratings in m/a? 

Thanks for your help

Ah I just checked it.. it says 30ma on it

 
The RCD is on my main panel. 

so I assume it covers the subpanel?

im no elextrician so no clue how an RCD works. 

I have another electrician coming out on sat

but yeah I only have one RCD.

i assume he didn't check that properly?

Servers very rarely turn off and on so startup current would happen maybe once a month but each machine is rebooted at different times not all at once due to 99.9% uptime. 

Unless there is a power outage 

 
 Can't get any pictures they in hard to get places ... you want a pic of the RCD? I can get that.

im not even sure what earth leakage is tbh.

i like to understand everything that gets done for me so I know it's done right.

ill have to spend some time learning about this stuff more

 
Yes I use UPS. Currently each machine has a UPS. However I will need to upgrade soon as it's an old one from before I had so many machines so it will only power long enough for me to power down manually in the event of a power outage I play devils advocate at the moment but in 5 years of living here i havnt had a single power cut... touch wood 

 
OK. FWIW, a few month ago I installed a supply for a 11kva UPS. cable from board to switch was 16mm on a 63a MCCB, cable from switch to UPS & UPS to DB were 10mm. 6mm seems a bit on the small side, and leaves no room for future expansion, especially since 30x 600w is 18kw not 11kw

 
I said 11kw based on my readings at peak I draw around 11kw for the most part of the day. 13 hours plus. I get small peaks above this on and off and the rest of the day usually dropping off slightly.

thats why I was skeptical.

basically would 6mm allow me to draw 11kw for 13 hours a day or would this max load cause a trip? If it is I'll just pay someone to do it all again and tell them I want a hole new consumer unit dedicated to it

 
11kw at 230v is 48a. depending on how its installed, 6mm can carry anything between 29 & 51a. thing is, if its installation method is rated to lower (i.e 46a if its clipped direct, or 32 if its enclosed in conduit / trunking) but on a 50a MCB, then it wont trip however the cable could overheat

how many circuits did he install at the end of the cable and how many sockets? for something like that where you dont want power to trip, id be looking to install a larger supply to a board feeding many circuits each with a few sockets rather than a few circuits with lots of sockets.

could even go as far as installing 2 submains & 2 boards feeding sockets and split everything between them, but you still have a common failure point at the service head / external power faults

 
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