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New Evidence of Apple's Plans for a Second Data Center Building at NC Site

TMay said:
Construction costs are really low now. It's a good time to build if the space is in a future plan anyway.
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The building's shell is nothing to Apple. They make more in interest on their cash hoard in a month than that building costs. 98+% of the "billion dollar" data center is what goes inside the building. The equipment... For example, there is no sense in installing a $800K chiller system if there no reason to chill the air. A subset of the equipment has to be installed as the building is built. It is not any cheaper to buy that equipment earlier and have it sitting largely idle not returning anything on the investment.

Likewise grid/cluster/cloud (whatever want to call it) packaging technology is changing. 8 years ago folks would have just just thrown in several truckloads of racks and just started plugging in 1U boxes. That's isn't the best way to do things on this scale. None of that makes major changes to the outside of the building but waiting till later could incorporate modifications to the interior.


Some folks use containers now. You roll in a big box and plug it in. [ Note: that is yet another reason don't want multistory building since would have to put very large boxes on elevators or need a crane. ]


Another reason to split the center into two buildings is that you can do upgrades and rehab on one portion without disrupting the other half. 3-4 years from now all the severs and tech being put into the first building will be obsolete and they will be ripping that stuff out and putting new stuff in.
 
I looked at some frames from the video posted earlier and choose to use the roadway running along the left end of the building as a point of reference. Assumed a two lane road width of 24 feet I'm measuring this building at around 250,000 sf. The biggest number I could come up with... measuring right to the very edge of the biggest bump out on all four sides... is around 320,000 sf. And it's safe to assume that many of those bump out areas are just office space. Of course, my margin of error is HUGE given the low resolution image and some of my assumptions. But even still... to come up with a size of 500,000 sf. would mean that I'm off by a factor of 2X.

The ROUGH dimensions I'm getting in Photoshop is about 1000 ft x 250 ft.

Of course, the building also looks like it could be three stories in height. So who knows.
 
New-Muadib said:
SkyNet!!!!
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My thoughts exactly. This is where it begins. Prepare for T800s with this logo on the forehead : :apple: LMAO. Steve Jobs is our Miles Dyson.
 

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I look at this a little different.

I think it was two submissions of how the site could be built. The photo of the single building looks much larger than each building in the dual building sketch. Maybe they just built what they intended. 1 large building period and there will be no further development.
 
You all dont believe this is soley for streaming media do you?
data gathering.... yes!
and Googles wind farm off the coast is just for power transmission..
no more secrets..
 
Guestimate

In the pic posted of the building. There are two semi trailers at the loading dock. A semi trailer is usually around 48' long. Using that as a reference I get a little less than 1250' x 390' one building is very close to 500,000 sq feet.
 
If you look at the original Flickr images, you'll note that the one with two buildings is labeled as "Phase 2". Not that that really tells us anything.
 
According to the assessment report for parcel 362711760090, it is actually 646,802 square feet for the single building.

01949701.jpg
 
zerosomething said:
In the pic posted of the building. There are two semi trailers at the loading dock. A semi trailer is usually around 48' long. Using that as a reference I get a little less than 1250' x 390' one building is very close to 500,000 sq feet.
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Although they may be large cube trucks and not semi trailers. That same image also shows parking spaces. The standard width of a parking space is 8'.
 
appletowns said:
Okay, my question is... why didn't they just construct a taller building with more floors and save some trees and space? Seems a bit of a waste to me...
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The the biggest problem with Data Server buildings is energy, both in getting it in as electricity and getting the heat generated by that electricity out of the building. This is probably the main reason why they did not "build up", as the strength of the walls to handle the heavy weight of the required air conditioning units as well as the complexity of the ducting and high current electrical systems become much more complex, expensive and difficult to maintain when it is built in a high density manner such as multiple levels.

If one has inexpensive land and can spread everything out then one can reduce these costs dramatically and improve the reliability of the operation through reduced complexity.
 
Takeo said:
The ROUGH dimensions I'm getting in Photoshop is about 1000 ft x 250 ft.
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It's difficult to say. I took a look at the aerial video and approximated the exact same dimensions going off the number of truck entry doors on the one end. However, the smallness of the drawings and the approximation of base numbers for calculations creates a large margin of error. Counting the parking spaces in front, and assuming a average width gave me completely different numbers: the short side became closer to 375lf, which would bring the total square footage back to 500,000sf.

Short answer: don't know.
 
PBUser167 said:
According to the assessment report for parcel 362711760090, it is actually 646,802 square feet for the single building.

01949701.jpg
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Right. As I noted in my rough estimate... there are lots of bumps here and there and the building is clearly 3 stories as well (although some areas may be double or triple height inside). So doing a simple width x length off the roof based on some low resolution point of reference isn't accurate at all.

So ya... good find!!! So it sounds like it actually is ~500,000 sf. and phase 2 would make it twice that... assuming your parcel sketch is the same plan the was rendered in those Flickr photos.
 
kalsta said:
Rate: Positive | Negative … Where's the 'Indifferent' button?!
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+1

Slow news day huh?

I'll use when it's ready and if it does something to make my life easier,
until then ........yawn,

PS: Please do an extensive report on what color schemes are being used inside:)
 
The address of this thing is:

6081 Startown Rd, Maiden, North Carolina, 28650

There is really nothing there yet in Google Earth or Google Maps. If you look carefully you can see that they likely started excavating before they had acquired the Fulbright property—remember the one Apple paid 1.7 for.
 
Takeo said:
Right. As I noted in my rough estimate... there are lots of bumps here and there and the building is clearly 3 stories as well (although some areas may be double or triple height inside). So doing a simple width x length off the roof based on some low resolution point of reference isn't accurate at all.

So ya... good find!!! So it sounds like it actually is ~500,000 sf. and phase 2 would make it twice that... assuming your parcel sketch is the same plan the was rendered in those Flickr photos.
Click to expand...

That sketch is from the county site, so that should be accurate. :)
 
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