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Considerations for Raised Floor Installation?
shanm asks: "I'm wondering if the community would have any recommendations and or cost rules of thumb on a raised floor installation. I'm considering doing that in a basement room (soon to be PC room and office) to make network/power wiring easier, modifiable, and expandable. The biggest constraint is that the basement doesn't have a 9 or 10 foot ceiling. So I don't have an unlimited height on the floor."
Since that's not likely practical for you, consider the other option that large data centers use: overhead raceways. Run your power and data cables overhead, then down into your racks/shelves.
This will save you the (possibly substantial) cost and hassle of raised flooring that you likely can't put to good use anyway. The cabling is actually more accessible, still out of harms way, and if neatly done it can be nice to look at.
...has ever flooded, or even smells damp, Don't do it!!! Use overhead cable trays or even run the wires up between floor joists. You don't want to ever mix wires and water, even if they're low voltage. It makes an unholy mess. I wouldn't have anything within 3 feet of the floor, if possible. Mount your rack servers on the walls, not sitting on the floor. Ditto for monitors, etc and especially UPS's! Speaking of UPS's, give your sump pump priority over keeping your servers running.
Good luck - my installation barely survived the floods caused by Hurricane Gaston (the stupid slideshow says Frances, but it was Gaston.)
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Before you go turning your home into a datacenter, call your city's building department and insurance company first or you might void your policy and/or break some laws.
beams, not rafters.
Lots of other people hit most of the points I would have made (and I have primary responsibility for a server room with a raised floor).
Consider just raising the computers, not the whole floor! You could use shelving (you could have some great, custom shelving made for your room much cheaper than you could buy the cheapest raised floor), or milk cartes as another did (as I do this with guitar amps), or anything else. Just run the cables under these. If you do the custom shelving, you can get a front panel. It could be like a 3" to 6" high shelf with cabinet doors in front. It can be painted, stained, carpeted, covered in red velvet, sprayed with truckbed liner, covered with beaten copper, layered in kevlar, or covered any way you like.
Or you could make some sort of custom gutter around the floor/wall junction, instead of hanging gutters. You can get these with a strip that closes them up.
You could use the little gutters that look sort of like skinny chair rails, at chair rail height. These are made for wiring added after the fact.
You have lots of options, all cheaper, easier, and safer than a raised floor.