These days, space is at a premium. As a business owner, it can be difficult enough to find a warehouse space within the vicinity of your business, let alone a space that can accommodate all of your storage needs.
Thankfully, the answer to your problems may be simpler than you think. Just look up! Vertical storage space can alleviate many of the problems business owners face when it comes to maximizing their warehouse’s storage capacity.
This is where Complete Warehouse Supply comes in: We can help you find the warehouse shelving system that is right for you.
But installing a new warehouse shelving system comes with a lot of questions. In this blog, we want to tackle one of the more common ones.
How High Can my Warehouse Shelving System Go?
That depends on what you are constructing. If you’re looking into pallet racking, there are no general height restrictions. However, there are several things you need to consider when making this decision.
Building Height
First, the height of your building. Obviously, you can’t create shelving that is taller than your ceilings. You need to allow for enough room to store items on the top shelf and leave space for any safety features or other obstructions such as ventilation, lights, and sprinklers.
Safety Guidelines
Before installing your new warehouse shelving system, you need to know what safety guidelines must be followed. For example, any shelving over 12 feet tall is considered high pile storage. Because of this, it is necessary to have an automatic sprinkler system for fire protection.
What You Are Storing?
What you are looking to store is a huge factor in deciding how high you can make your warehouse shelving system. Some things to consider:
1. What kinds of items are you storing? – Some items just aren’t meant to be stored up high, for several reasons. They may be hazardous materials or just too large/bulky to be stored high up safely.
2. How often do you need to access them? – It doesn’t always make sense to store items you need to access multiple times a day on a high shelf. Consider what you will be storing before making the decision to create higher warehouse shelving systems to decide if this is the right move for you.
3. How much lift equipment do you have? – If your warehouse has several forklifts or other equipment readily available, it may be feasible to store more frequently accessed items on higher shelves. If not, it may not be a cost-effective choice for your warehouse.
How High Your Lift Equipment Reaches
This is a really important thing to consider when deciding how high of shelving you want to install. If your lift equipment can’t reach your top shelves, you may be in trouble. Buying new lift equipment is extremely costly, and may not be an option for your business. So consider this before installing a new warehouse shelving system. Otherwise you’ve don’t a great job of creating additional storage space that you can’t make use of effectively.