Career Tech CentersCentral OhioColumbus

Tolles Cybersecurity Lab Renovation 2024

Tolles Technical & Career Center's cybersecurity program now works in a purpose-built 50-station lab across two adjoining classrooms: power and data under the floor to every station, upgraded electrical service, supplemental cooling for the equipment load, dimmable LED lighting, new carpet, ceilings and casework, and four 85-inch smart displays in each room. Prodigy carried the architectural and engineering design, the permitting and the construction. Tolles bought the project pre-bid through the TOP-C cooperative contract.

Tolles Technical & Career Center in Plain City runs its cybersecurity program in two adjoining classrooms — 4,393 square feet of space built for general instruction and asked to hold a lab. The carpet, the ceiling grid and the 2x4 troffers were the ones the rooms came with, and the electrical service behind them was never sized for the number of machines a security program now puts on the floor.

The district rebuilt both rooms rather than refitting them. Prodigy carried the architectural and engineering design and the permitting, then took the space down: carpet, ceiling pads and grid out throughout, walls demolished where the new plan called for it, doors returned to the owner, and a new storage room framed into the corner of the room, symmetrical with the space beside it. New commercial-grade nylon carpet tile and a new acoustical grid and pads went back in. The panel serving the space was upgraded and the branch wiring reworked for 50 computer stations and their technology load, distributed through a subfloor power and data raceway. LED backlit panels with occupancy controls and dimmers replaced the troffers, new casework at the rear took over storage, walls and existing door frames were painted, and the existing PA and intercom was relocated into the new ceiling layout.

Cooling was the other half of the problem. Fifty stations put more heat into two classrooms than a system sized for general instruction was ever meant to move, so a supplemental system was added for the warmer months and the wall thermostats moved with the new layout. Four 85-inch smart displays are mounted in each space, and the desk layout was left open to revision with school personnel.

Glass wall and ceiling lighting at the Tolles cybersecurity lab

Students at work in the Tolles cybersecurity lab

Tolles cybersecurity lab workstations under blue LED cove lighting

Technical Discussion

Fifty computers are a cooling load

A cybersecurity lab is a classroom with a data center's problem. Tolles' lab is two adjoining rooms totaling 4,393 square feet, and it holds 50 workstations plus eight 85-inch displays. The room's original air handling was sized for people and lights. It was not sized for that.

Bar chart of electronics load in the Tolles cybersecurity lab: 50 workstations at about 200 watts each, 10,000 watts, and eight large displays at about 150 watts, 1,200 watts. The computers alone are about 34,000 BTU per hour, nearly 3 tons of cooling. — Figure 1 — The supplemental cooling system exists because of this number.

The arithmetic

A desktop workstation with a monitor draws on the order of 150 to 250 watts while it is working, and in a security lab it is working. Fifty of them at 200 watts is 10,000 watts, all of which becomes heat in the room. That is about 34,000 BTU per hour, or nearly 3 tons of cooling, on top of what 50 students and the lighting already add. The displays add another kilowatt or so. A general classroom of this size is usually designed for a fraction of that internal load, which is why computer labs are the rooms that are warm in May with the system running flat out.

Supplemental cooling instead of a bigger unit

The scope adds a dedicated supplemental cooling system for the warm months and leaves the building's air handling and ductwork alone. A room-specific unit can be sized to the electronics load and run only when the room is occupied, where upsizing the building unit would cool the whole wing to serve two rooms. Thermostats were relocated to the new wall layout.

Power and data under the floor

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