I was looking at the Burj Dubai, which is the world’s tallest building and the article tells what is on the different floors. Now I noticed the top 46 floors are used for “mechanical.” What exactly does that mean?
I know buildings need floors dedicated to electricity and plumbing and a/c and heating and such, but why are so many at the top? Is it just a function to build the building to the world’s highest? Or is it that the building is so high no one would want to rent the floors so high up so they put the mechanics up there? Or perhaps in case of another terrorist attack there’d be less people up top?
Here’s a breakdown of floor usage from the Wikipedia
The machinery that is used to make the building livable is concentrated there. The top is a good place for much of it because of the vents are at the top. The water is at the top and gravity helps with the distribution. This includes fire suppression. There are some building with stabilization machinery in the top to counter wind and other forces.
Elevator machinery, electrical transformers, giant water tanks, boilers/furnaces, plumbing and heating distribution manifolds, phone line termination equipment, network routers/patch panels, building maintenance and security offices, and the big box of Christmas decorations.
Also, that floor plan mentions mechanical floors lower in the building, such as on the 17th and 18 floors. As the Wikipedia article mentions that the building has double-deck elevators, my guess is that these floors are for elevator lobbies. (So that you can take a double-deck express elevator to an upper level lobby and then a local elevator to the correct floor.)
Is there any reason why the top floors are mechanical though? I was just wondering about that more than anything.
I know the latest trend in building tall buildings is to get them high and through the use of spires and such they can achieve this height without having to add any functionality. So I was thinking perhaps the reason there were so many “mechanical floors” was simply to increase the height of the building.
That way instead of putting all the mechanical equipment on the lower floor that is bigger they could divide it up and put less on each floor and make the building taller.
The reasons I gave are reasons for them to be near at the top. Water can’t be properly supplied from the lower floors only. I know there are films describing how come they are built how they are. Maybe a search for these is in order.
Seriously, 40+ floors of mechanical? That sounds like either they’re using very broad terms, or there’s not a whole lot there. Or it’s COBRA’s secret command center.
I see in the wiki article that the 123rd (1444 feet and 440 meters) floor will be an indoor outdoor observation deck with 700 feet of spire still going up.
Yes but those top 40 floors are not the only “mechanical” floors. Like I said in my post, the data that is provided in the OP seems to something like half of all floors in the building as being “mechanical”.
Accirding to the gang at SkyscraperCity, a lot of those upper floors in the Burj Dubai are pretty small, being up in the spire. So azside from things like water tanks and the tuned mass damper, they’re probably antenna floors: transmitting equipment, weather sensors, etc.
Just a WAG. I’m not sure if it would be the same type of thing but anyone who’s had to do work in a hospital has probably been in one of those little crawlspace type floors in between the main floors. They’re not even big enough to stand up in, they are hot and cramped and full of pipes and conduit and various things but they provide better access to various lines and runs than would otherwise be available. Maybe in this building they assigned numbers to those types of floors where in other buildings they aren’t given separate numbers like that except on a service elevator maybe.
The Amazing Race put a cluebox on what looked like the under-construction 123rd floor observation deck two episodes ago. After reading about the construction standards in the UAE, I’m not sure if I want to ever get within blow-over range of this building…
Usually, the 13th floor is reserved for mechanical stuff in very tall buildings. I was surprised by your layout that the 13th floor is being used for a hotel.
