Specifications for new lab space

Setting up some new lab space? Need some plans and specifications for renovations? Here are some notes that are relevant for setting up rooms for 2-photon microscopes and/or electrophysiology to be used with animals. If your target is something different from that, then maybe there are at least bits and pieces of this that could be useful.

• Vents: HEPA filters on all air outflows. With user-adjustable baffles to redirect air flow away from equipment as needed. Air blowing on equipment can cause hard-to-troubleshoot vibrations. It’s also not nice for experimenters who might have to sit in one place for a long time. The HEPA filters need to be on a maintenance schedule. It’s not really a HEPA filter if there’s no maintenance plan executed.
• Temperature stability: Physiology, optics, lasers– temperature fluctuations can cause variability in many ways. +/- 2 degrees C is easy to hit, but could still cause measurable changes in lasers and optics. If it’s slow enough, you can probably deal with it without too much trouble. Getting it down to +/- 1 degree C would be great, but might be too expensive or cumbersome to do, depending on the building. For example, I don’t want a massive increase in HVAC air flow just to get 1 degree more stability, because the air movement can cause problems too. That said, if you’re making a home-made STED system, any additional stability couldn’t hurt.
• The set temperature should be something that humans and animals are comfortable with. I’ve been in microscopy rooms that are aggressively air conditioned and end up being too cold for people to work long hours in. Plus animals may lose body heat during experiments. Avoid that.
• Heat load usually isn’t that bad. A typical server room probably kicks up more heat than a lab room. A Ti:Sapph laser system, including chiller, runs on about 2000 watts maximum. Usual usage is probably closer to 1000 watts. A desktop computer, including monitor, is maybe 200 watts average. So the laser is like 5 computers, maybe 10 maximum. Along with all of the computers and electronics, I think most 2p setup are well under 5000 watts average consumption. If the room is rated to deal with 5-10 kw of heat, you should be fine. This will also affect the stability too, of course. 
• Air changes per hour (ACH): Labs often have pretty quick air turnover. Around here, >40 air changes per hour is typical, so dissipating the heat should be easy. That’s also good to mitigate pathogen spread (SARS-CoV-2).
• You want relative humidity under 70%. The lower the better for the equipment, but humans (and animals) would likely be better off with some non-zero value.
• It’s nice to have environmental monitoring set up for light, temperature, humidity, and so forth. It’s easy to set up yourself, but it can also be incorporated at build time.
• As for vibration — you could ask your table manufacturer (e.g., Newport or Thorlabs or whomever) what vibration specs the building needs to satisfy for their tables to operate within their specs. Note that conventional air-floated optical tables dampen high frequency much better than low frequency vibrations. Active isolation can do better with low frequency vibrations.
• I like having my rooms positive pressure relative to the hallway. This way, air leaves the room. Less dust pulled in from the hallway. A lot of labs are negative relative to the hallway to limit contamination escape, but there aren’t really any contamination hazards in a 2p room. It’s not essential, but nice if you can get it.
• Outlets. Although there isn’t a massive power draw overall, there are a lot of little items that all need to be plugged in (many with wall-wart power supplies that can block other outlets). Fire/safety people hate daisy chained power strips, so get as many outlets as you can, distributed around the room. For a 300 sq ft room with 1 rig, I might make use of >30 outlets. If some of those can come from power strips, great. But I’d want confirmation of that ahead of time.
• Light control. Lights should be able to be turned on-and-off at the wall. Lights can cause electrical noise, so it should be possible to leave them off entirely and use other lighting in the room when needed. Some rooms have one light that is always on for safety– and/or lights on timers– I’d avoid those when possible.
• I’d also ask for an auditory noise spec. That is, is the room right next to a noisy -80 freezer, an elevator shaft, or a mechanical room? What is the expected noise leakage? Under 40 dB? No worries. If it’s too high, then maybe ask for extra sound insulation, and/or a heavier door.
• Windows. If there are windows (and I love windows), then there should be blackout shades provided with side and bottom channels for complete darkness when needed. No blinds. This includes interior windows (e.g., on the door).
• On tap: If it’s possible, having medical oxygen, compressed air, and vacuum piped in can be nice. That way you don’t need tanks or compressors in the room.
• If you can get a snorkel installed, to extract waste anesthetic gasses, that can be nice. But note that these are often large and cumbersome and can restrict the formatting of the room.
• Having a ceiling-mounted shelf over the optical table is great. If it’s going to be big, then it should be strong enough and have enough clearance so that someone can climb up there and sort out wiring.
• Having a sink is nice, but sometimes that triggers other rules. E.g., if you’re doing surgery in the room, are sinks prohibited, optional, or essential?
• Materials: No fabric or porous materials. Everything needs to be wipeable. Plastic, metal, etc.
• Having a drain in the floor can also be nice, since floods and accidents do happen. No carpet of course.
• If you’re going to run a laser system for 3-photon microscopy, then you’ll want to check with the laser manufacturer for what they suggest. Those systems can be pretty massive in terms of physical footprint, power, noise.
• Having cable trays about a meter off the floor around the whole perimeter of the room can help make chasing cables easier, and it gets them off the floor and keep them cleaner and safe.

None of these are absolutely essential. You can get good work done in non-ideal spaces. But if you’re looking for specifications, maybe this is a useful list.