this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2023
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I would strongly consider a couple coats of a fire retardant to the backer board just as a solid safety measure.
You can sort of think of it like this... Every single line that connects to the equipment on that board runs through various other aspects of your house. Any single lightning strike or unfortunate short around any of those little pathways would concentrate back to the equipment you have in this photo... And right now you have that equipment bolted directly to a flammable surface that is attached directly to your home. For sure you would not pass a safety audit if this were in a corporate data center, and I'm not saying that should be your goal. But you may also want to consider your insurance policy might fight you on pay out if this did become the origin of the fire.
You haven't installed a bonding bridge either (which would really be over kill here but you could consider it if you were to upgrade a few of these components later). A couple coats of a fire retardant would be valuable piece of mind... You can use fire treated plywood designed specifically for use in this sort of application as well instead if you wanted though.
You can find intumescent coatings on the internet...
https://www.gaf.com/en-us/products/topcoat-fireout-fire-barrier-coating
Here is an example of a plywood rated for telecom panels
https://frtw.com/?page_id=57
This is great advice and had I thought/known this I might have chosen another backer material. I just used what I had laying around. Elsewhere I installed cement backer board for this very reason. I just didn’t think about this equipment or the wiring being of concern. I will look into the Intumescent coatings.
I would say it is seriously low risk in a residential configuration like this, and not worth stressing to much about tbh. I happen to have a couple years of experience in IT and have had to bring data centers into compliance for this sort of stuff before, and figured I'd share what I know.