Early Raised Floor

This is a raised floor found in Chester, England, installed about 400 A.D. by the Romans. Not bad for 1600 year old technology.

The Romans built fires at one end of the floor and created drafts to force the heat under the floor during the cold English winters (No, we didn't install it). These raised floors were also used in buildings surrounding the hot springs at Bath, England to warm the patrons of the natural hot springs.

The first modern modular raised floor used to house wiring was developed in 1956 by an ex GI who got tired of stumbling over cable troughs in computer rooms and dark radar buildings. Since the first computers used vacuum tubes, huge amounts of heat were generated that demanded very large amounts of air conditioning. These floors made it easy to concentrate the air conditioning under the racks of equipment.

A&L Plastics began producing trim edge, stringer covers and pedestal head pads for the raised floor industry in 1960. Since then we have added grommets, cutout molding, corner clip and panel lifters to our inventory. Through the years, we have supplied nearly all the major floor manufacturers in the US, Canada, and now export world wide.

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