Gridd® Access Floor Opens a World of Possibilities

Do any of these challenges sound familiar?

• Ineffecient space for cable density requirements
• Difficulty installing
• Lateral instability due to outdated raised floor technologies
• Premature wear and tear
• Instability

Traditional raised floor systems, once 24-36” in height, have lowered to 4-6”, and yet the design remains the same. This space is inadequate for the proper layout of cables

Outdated Power Delivery

Cabling and power poles interfere with proper office layout and clutter the workspace. Not only does this outdated design present challenges to power deliver, but it can also indicate there is insufficient room to meet the dense cable requirements of advanced networks.

Installation Problems

Old fashioned raised floor construction can be challenging to install because it requires screws and core drilling. Installations become even harder when the concrete slab underfloor is uneven

Premature Wear and Tear

Building imperfections, such as uneven surfaces, can make traditional post and panel raised access flooring unstable over time, showing wear and tear prematurely. The added stress on connection points can cause failure and instability. They wear out your access floors, costing more and requiring replacement sooner. Cheap flooring systems make management difficult, eating up budgets and staff-hours and become more expensive over the long-term. 

Instability

Over time, traditional raised floor designs can become loose and uneven. 

These outdated flooring systems can leave you looking for a simpler, smarter solution.

“I am very satisfied with the ease of installation, the ability to reconfigure, run data, phone and power. Without the availability of this product [The Gridd access floor system], the project would have required the removal of concrete flooring to install conduit for the phone, data, and electrical needs. The product [Gridd’s revolutionized raised floor] has been in use since July 2008 with no issues noted. At first there was some apprehension about the free floating and maybe the floor creaking, but there has not been one complaint. I would definitely consider the FreeAxez [Gridd] access floor system on the next project.”

-Timothy Van Loo, Facilities Manager
Exelon Corporation

Raised floor access is known by a variety of names within the industry.

• Access floor
• Raised floor
• Raised access computer flooring 

In raised floor access, builders construct an elevated floor above a building’s original concrete slab surface. The hidden space between the slab and the access floor is captured to provide a protected area to install IT cables, mechanical and electrical infrastructure.

The right raised floor system is critical to any project where one is needed.

FreeAxez access flooring, also known as Gridd®, is an award winning, low profile access floor for adaptive cable distribution. Due to Gridd’s unique design, the Construction Specifications Institute (CSI) issued a separate product number from the rest of the industry.

Gridd’s raised floor technology is the leading solution for cable management.

Why is Gridd so popular? It optimizes three aspects of implementing an access floor.

Business Specific Adaptability

Gridd access floor adapts to the needs of your operation: offices, training centers, public buildings, medical facilities, and industrial settings. Gridd makes cabling and power poles unnecessary, freeing up needed space.

Facility Integration

Commercial buildings weave together like electrical, cooling, and air distribution. Gridd raised floor solution harmonizes with building infrastructure to ensure a safe, comfortable working environment.

Cable Management

Organizations need flooring to support and protect underfloor networks. Gridd is specifically designed as a cable management system and to provide flexible routing and distribution across your facility. Gridd access flooring allows IT teams to optimize initial installations and reconfigure with evolving business priorities.

A raised floor system is designed to fully integrate every component and build it into an easy-to-manage whole. Designers of traditional access floors have held onto older technologies and resisted the changes required to step into the advanced requirements of today’s enterprise.

As a result, the installation process for earlier floors is awkward and time consuming. These components are held together by screws, which means connection points can weaken over time. Moreover, the installation process for traditional access floors is lengthy and resource intensive due to the drilling involved.

Gridd’s Adaptive Cabling Distribution System® has modular components that snap together quickly and easily at a rate of 1000 square feet per installer per day. Modules interlock, mechanically held down by gravity. Gridd works with gravity and not against it, providing speed, stability and flexibility at the same time.

Gridd raised floor is an access floor that makes changing your technology infrastructure fast and efficient. And Gridd’s simple, yet revolutionary raised floor design transforms and grows with your business. It makes adds, moves, and changes in a snap.

However, Gridd goes further. Rather than simply providing a wide open space where cables can become damaged, it features channels that protect cables and open easily without the need to invest in extra tools.

Gridd’s system allows you to easily rearrange all or part of your underfloor cabling as needs arise.

Finally, Gridd’s flexible, strong, modular technology allows people a solid, safe place to work.

A low profile raised floor gives you:

More Room to Do Business

Gridd access floor comes in two heights: Gridd® 40 which is 1.6” and Gridd® 70 which is 2.75”.

Gridd’s adaptive cable management concept has become the preferred choice among architects and end users, but it was classified under the same MasterFormat number (10270) as traditional post and panel raised floors and this created confusion.

Architects called for 10270 in their building specifications thinking of Gridd’s adaptive cable management system, but contractors often substituted a traditional post and panel raised floor – a result that often dissatisfied end users.

While it recognized the distinct difference between Gridd raised floor and traditional floors, the Construction Specification Institute (CSI) assigned Gridd a separate classification and it officially assigned Gridd a new MasterFormat number and title: Low Profile Fixed Height Access Flooring.

Today, Gridd’s impact on building design is now well established. It provides infrastructure upgrades and office reconfigurations in less time, at less cost and with fewer disruptions and headaches!

Clutter Free Wide Open Space

Gridd preserves ceiling height while giving you a distribution system for cable and power management.

The CSI and CSA designate the MasterFormat number and title for this newer generation of raised flooring systems: 09 69 33 – Low Profile Fixed Height Access Flooring.

The traditional raised floor still serves the same purpose today as it has for the last 50 years: air distribution.

With the explosion of information technology and audio-visual innovation taking place, modern building requirements have rapidly and dramatically changed. The need for an alternative approach to raised flooring systems has emerged.

The result is a raised floor solution for underfloor cable management, power distribution and connectivity for the now-wider range of applications where air distribution was not needed.

Low profile flooring is not a replacement for traditional designs if the purpose is for underfloor air distribution, Low profile flooring is a flexible and adaptive solution for cable management applications where air distribution is not a concern.

With Gridd, there is one product that is manufactured with integral support, replacing outdated post and panel designs. It is a gravity-held system not secured to the concrete.

After installation, the office designers can cover floor panels with a variety of flooring finishes, such as carpet tiles, vinyl tiles, linoleum, high-pressure laminate, rubber tiles, wood, marble, and stone and ceramic tiles.

Unlike raised floors of the past, Gridd is an access floor, cable management solution suited to even the most demanding business environments. Gridd shifts the paradigm in how we think about access floors.

Building designs need to reflect the digital transformation taking place within the organization they serve. As devices continue to connect to the internet, businesses need the clutter-free ease and flexible access to power, voice, and data at the point of need and organized and out of sight.

Gridd’s Whole Building Design approach integrates distribution technology throughout the entire building infrastructure.

Gridd enables a building to adapt to inevitable technology changes, remain highly functional and operational, and saves money at every stage of its life cycle.

From the day it opened its doors, over 25-years ago, FreeAxez has made solving customer problems its focus. The number priority is to help you reach your highest levels of productivity. Through Gridd, the revolutionary and award-winning Adaptive Cabling Distribution System®, FreeAxez helps support organizations throughout their digital transformation by providing unified cabling technologies that swiftly respond to the demands of your dynamic workplace.

Businesses across a broad spectrum of industries and verticals are turning to FreeAxez’ reconfigurable, low-profile, raised floors to adapt to the needs of their clients and workforce while remaining cost-effective.

FreeAxez solutions ensure you achieve the results your business demands. Even after initial installation, FreeAxez provides ongoing support through every stage of the process of maintaining and utilizing the Gridd system.

FreeAxez is a partner in your success, and that relationship lasts well after the purchase of Gridd.

Let a knowledgeable FreeAxez advisor walk you through the product. Click below to set up a product demo either via video conference or at your location.

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By moving cables under the floor, your room harmonizes with the needs of the people who work there across the full spectrum of industry installations.

• At the current estimated average employee density rate for organizations, 125 to 225 square feet per employee, modern offices have their hands full organizing cables and wires. Computer networks, office equipment and power cables demand deployment solutions that don’t impinge on employee space or productivity.
• Gridd 40 at only 1.6” (40 mm) height and Gridd70 at only 2.75” (70 mm) height accommodates these requirements.
• In earlier generations of raised floors, designers focused on height to maximize airflow due to the proportionately high amounts of heat these technologies generated. Current office technologies no longer require underfloor cooling. Outdated floor technologies have now been replaced.
• FreeAxez’ attractive low profile cable management solutions give you clean, organized, and open workspaces that maximize productivity and wellbeing.
• Gridd maximizes ceiling height allowing you the ability to retain ceiling height as your business grows and occupancy increases.
• Gridd all steel construction, it can be easily picked up, moved and rearranged multiple times without deteriorating.
• Gridd consists of 16-gauge zinc galvanized steel and is 100% recyclable.
• 
Gridd is 100% made in the USA.
• Gridd is installed without screws and core drilling and can depreciate as equipment and thus saves money in the long term.
• Gridd can also be leased.

• Gridd installation is easy and quick, at a rate of 1000 square feet per installer per day.
• Gridd has a high cable capacity. Gridd40 (1.6”) can accommodate up to 50 Cat5e / 45 Cat6 / 19 Cat6A cables every 15 inches at 40% capacity, more than sufficient for any office or computer room.
• Gridd’s unique deisgn offers flexibility to add, move, and change workspace configurations.
• Modules snap into place mechanically, held down by gravity. Cable channels may be opened without tools for easy cable management after the flooring is laid.
• Gridd does not feel like a raised floor. Its solid high-strength construction guarantees stability without creaking or bumpiness. It’s design eliminates the sensation of walking on an access floor.
• Components are lightweight and easy to put in place.
• Unlike other raised floors, Gridd is quiet. Its innovative design eliminates distracting footfall and sound resonation

Gridd Adjusts to Varying Floor Heights Throughout an Organizational Campus

• Gridd eliminates the need for floor preparation.
• Gridd’s ADA Compliant ramps install easily on any floor suitable for carpeting or PVC flooring. Gridd adjusts to ADA facility requirements of slopes ranging from the least possible at below 1:12, to cross slopes of 1:48, to provide better usability to the widest range of users.

Gridd Adjusts to Circular Installations Circular

• Installations are simple with Gridd standard border components. Its intuitive design accommodates curved or irregular walls to ensure a smooth wall to wall finish.

Gridd Fits Tightly Along Walls

• Gridd borders and frames slide flush to wall surfaces and fasten to the top of the base units.

Gridd Is Sustainable

• All Gridd components may be reused which is good for business and the planet.
• Gridd is easily repositioned in the same room or on the same campus. Components are not fastened to the sub-floors. Its efficient design uses gravity to hold in place. The only screws needed hold down ramps and slopes.
• Gridd components are 100% USA steel. None of the parts have plastic, which is great for the environment and also safer.
• Gridd is robust and durable yet only adds 5 pounds per square foot of weight onto floors. Competitors average 15 pounds. Gridd protects your concrete surface.

Gridd Has Cable Outlets and Transitions

Gridd has components to help transition cabling for many different applications.

• Gridd base units, channel plates, and corner plates provide wiring outlets. Installers do not need to cut or drill anything.
• The Gridd system stays clean and organized.
• Gridd builds wire connectors and electrical outlet boxes directly into the system. Gridd will also accommodate other brand outlet service boxes, so existing equipment may be repurposed.

Gridd Does Not Require Special Carpet Tiles

• Gridd works with all brands of carpet or PVC tiles. Tiles can self-adhere or pressure-sensitive glue may be applied to the floor surface, which holds the tiles in place and still allows easy access to the wiring channels.
• Gridd comes in attractive wood flooring modules custom designed for FreeAxez
• A wide range of available floor coverings can be used with Gridd. As long as floor products are modular such as carpet tile, luxury vinyl tile (LVT), and rubber tile, access to the cabling below is retained. LVT must be a minimum of 5 mm thickness to avoid telegraphing of the Gridd surface texture.
• Gridd may be covered with fixed floor such as wood, stone, ceramic, and terrazzo but this greatly diminishes flexibility for moves, adds, and changes.
• Use of fixed flooring often occurs where power is needed within these hard surfaced floor locations but core drilling or trenching is not a reasonable soltuion.
• Leaving Gridd flooring systems uncovered is not recommended. Though it offers an appealing aesthetic, it demands consistent maintenance to keep dirt and debris from accumulating in the cabling channels.

Gridd Is Easy to Install

• Other flooring solutions require special crews. Gridd snaps together without the need for special tools.

Gridd Is Energy Efficient

• Energy controls within Gridd Power can save businesses money and run efficiently

Gridd Is Designed to Manage Cables

• Other systems say they manage cables but leave your cables in disarray. Gridd funnels them neatly in protected channels.
• Gridd’s ramp transitions are smoother and lower. Competitors needs a full ramp in order to get into the room

At every point of comparison it’s clear, there is no comparison. The Gridd raised access floor is smarter, easier to manage, and gives you a much better outcome, now and into the future. Don’t see the information you’re looking for? FreeAxez always welcomes inquiries.

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