How to Identify Misleading Carpet Tile Specifications in ESD Flooring

No Jason, your auditor actually exposed two of the biggest deficiencies in our industry – safety and electrical certification. You have inadvertently uncovered a serious product design flaw – specific to a certain type of static control carpet tile. Your floor is more conductive on the top surface than it is through the thickness. This is likely the result of over loading the yarn with super conductive fibers. Since the top of the tile is highly conductive, by default, it can become the path of least resistance when a grounded chassis or rack is placed on top of it. This unintentional ground connection bypasses the ground pathway the manufacturer hoped would go through the thickness of your tile. Your auditor recognized that this ground path presents an unsafe condition to people working near the electrical equipment.

In many cases the level of conductivity you detected is prohibited in telecommunication grounding standards. You should check with your insurance company to determine if you have exposure.

Two Options to Correct an Existing Unsafe Condition:

1. Demand a new installation by exercising your warranty rights. This may be inconvenient since you are already occupying the space and a full re-installation will be disruptive to your company.
2. Strategically remove the tiles near the servers and replace them with a safer carpet.

How To Avoid Getting Stuck with Unsafe Carpet

The best way to avoid this from happening in the first place is always ask a supplier to provide you with these 2 pieces of measurement data:

1. The lowest potential resistance to ground you can possibly measure on their product from:
   1. The top of the tile to the bottom of the tile
   2. From one point on top of any single tile to another point on top of the same tile. See photo below:
      
      

Get the Installation Certified

Some manufacturers will say they do not have data for one point to another. You may need to press them or hire an independent testing company. Regardless of the data, state the following in any purchase order and you will retain your rights in the event of a dispute:

Supplier to certify at completion of the installation: All resistance measurements on the surface of individual tiles or through the thickness of tiles are greater than 1.0 X 10 E6.