Data center construction is consuming all of the tradespeople who usually do work in homes and causing price spikes for contracting similar to what we are seeing for hardware prices. I’m guessing those workers are doing at least OK for themselves ;)
Residential contractors are typically not the same as commercial contractors. Simply for the fact that commercial charges 2x what residential does is one of those reasons. Not saying there is zero overlap, but the pools are not totally shared.
Yea, commercial has far stricter inspection and material requirements then residential. You're playing with a whole lot more angry pixies in a pipe.
Most of the overlap I see is when there is a commercial building collapse (economically, not literally) and you end up seeing master electricians working on residential. Much more rare to see the opposite movement unless it's a permanent change.
> commercial has far stricter inspection and material requirements then residential. You're playing with a whole lot more angry pixies in a pipe.
Not only that, but the trades stick to their trades.
You don't get, for example, datacentre electricians rocking up pretenting they can install network cable to spec and running away having (if you are lucky) only done a continuity test on the cable they just installed.
Meanwhile every man and his dog, or even just the dog, will very happily turn up at your house and tell you they can install your CAT6 to spec for you when they've never seen a Fluke in their entire life.
> You don't get, for example, datacentre electricians rocking up pretenting they can install network cable to spec and running away having (if you are lucky) only done a continuity test on the cable they just installed.
I frequently have my electricians pull and terminate network cable if it’s only one or a few (daisy-chained VAV controllers or a network drop for a BAS panel), if the customer needs a formal TIA-568 test then I’ll sub that out. My electricians are already pulling and terminating building automation cable, CAT 6 isn’t gonna stop em :)
Oh awesome! I’m glad there are others in the industry around here :)
I’d like to learn more about PLCs and SCADA, but that scope of work usually falls on another contractor, we mostly provide installation for BAS systems that control HVAC and chilled/hot water plants.
I do some water treatment plant projects and there’s a local contractor that handles the PLC and SCADA stuff.
In a bunch of recent residential building I've seen the electricians "attempt" to install networking cables as it's a value add they can install for very little while the walls are still open.
Needless to say I've re-pulled a lot of those cables due to so many failures.
I think some of this comes from everyone "moving up a notch". If the "top" electricians are going to data centers, the second rate are covering their old jobs, and on down until residential electricians are doing light industrial and commercial work (can probably charge more, and open up a new avenue of business).
A residential electrician would be completely lost on a data center site. Commercial electricians travel around to the various data center projects. Most of the trades are similar.
> Data center construction is consuming all of the tradespeople who usually do work in homes
I want to know what country you live in that you can find domestic tradespeople who will do work to the same standard as datacentres, and do it at domestic prices. ;)
lol. may as well put a sign around your neck that says that you don’t know what you’re talking about. this sounds like a social media rumour cooked up to add fuel to the anti data center fire.
