Carroll County IT Technician, Dalton Morrison, brought an update to the Carroll County Board of Supervisors Monday morning on the proposal to install a new Clean Agent fire suppression system into the server room in the new jail. The original quote was estimated at slightly more than $30,000, but Morrison says they are awaiting a quote from Feld Fire and he is anticipating a much lower amount. Supervisor, Gene Meiners, says he reached out to the county’s insurer to find out why there were no savings for installing the gas system that can extinguish a fire without damaging other electronic equipment in the room.
Morrison says it has not been easy to find companies that can bid on the systems as they are quite specialized. He is hoping they will have something comparable to the original quote received. Stephanie Hausman says she understands there is a need to make a decision soon as construction moves forward on the jail. However, she is not ready to jump to the approval step just yet.
Neil Bock agrees, but asks the question, “Where do we stop?”
Morrison agrees, but told the supervisors there is a lot of equipment that is not included in that backup. He wants to stem any spread from one piece of equipment to damaging the entire rack. The gas system, which removes the oxygen from the server room, thus cutting off the fuel to the fire, is the suppression choice for Chair, Rich Ruggles. He says he believes that spending an additional smaller sum of money up front can help protect several hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment. Dean Schettler asked Morrison how confident he is that the system will contain it to just one of the servers. Morrison says his research has found most systems are up to 99 percent reliable. Morrison will be bringing the quote back for review as soon as the next meeting on Monday, Nov. 9.
