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Therefore, using electricity as our primary, or only, source of power on-site means we’ll be tracking alongside the decarbonisation of the grid.

Height.. Limited headroom in existing offices may be insufficient for taller lab equipment or increased services distribution.. An ideal starting-point for a lab is a floor-to-floor height between 4.2 and 4.5m, with an office typically being in the 3.6 to 4.2m range.. Taller items such as fume cabinets and MBSCs can normally be accommodated under a 2.7m high ceiling (similar to what you might find in a modern office), however some specialist or larger-scale equipment will require additional headroom or maintenance and withdrawal space, and localised raised ceilings may be necessary, or the equipment simply might not fit.. Labs require many more services than an office, which normally means a deeper ceiling void.Limited risers in offices can also result in more service crossovers and congestion, increasing this depth further still.

It is often possible to mitigate some of this through good design, such as lowering ceilings in corridors to accommodate main ductwork runs or positioning lower height rooms close to risers.Ground floor units and older office buildings may also have larger floor-to-floor heights, and there can even be opportunities to increase headroom by removing raised-access floors (though this will impact floor thresholds.)A deeper ceiling void may also introduce the need for sprinklers or fire detection systems.. 3.

Structural frames in existing office buildings may be unable to support higher lab loads or vibration sensitive equipment..Some automated and larger-scale lab equipment can be particularly heavy, and even high densities of smaller equipment or storage items can result in relatively high loads when compared to a standard office fit-out.

A typical office may have a live load capacity of around 3-4kN/m.

2. , while a lab will often require 4-5kN/m.Lab fit-out in a building originally intended for office use.

Fume cabinets installed as part of a biotech lab fit out in an existing office.Kit-of-parts developed by Bryden Wood for rapid deployment of labs into existing office and commercial spaces.

Bryden Wood's kit-of-parts for lab design.Existing office buildings may struggle to accommodate new laboratory HVAC plant and distribution..