Jon,
No offense taken…in fact thanks for posting those pictures. They are great reference. When I built mine I had taken a few pictures myself that I used as reference. There is definately many different shapes and sizes out there.
Brian B.
DT&I 1980ish
Mike warehouses used to be a specialty of mine years ago. I always let the truck access and the loading dock rule the roost becasue I knew it was the most critical aspect of a successfull design for that kind of building. Bad truck access = bad luck leasing the unit. I’ve seen some real stupid stuff, like putting the loading dock at the front of the access road, so one had to drive thru the truck parking to get to the offices, bad idea, once those trucks start moving they can block up the drive for a long time before they are parked. We require 110 feet clear manuevering area in front of the loading docks, seen some designs that sneaked the employee parking area into this manuvering area, reducing it to 90 feet, which is fine and dandy till a truck trying to get out of the loading docks slams into the receptionists Toyota that was parked there. I tried to put the employee parking nearest the street where the offices should be and the truck area behind that, this also allowed for the truck area to be secured with a gate at night if needed.
My only real peeve was owners that for the life of me, just could not understand why they just couldnt add as much square feet to their property as they felt they could cram onto it. The area allowances per code limit developemnt of a property to allow for fire lane access, exiting, and fire clearance & open space between buildings.
My favorite example was an owner that had a building that was already built to the maximum allowable area for the lot size, this included fire department required sideyard setbacks from the property line of 40 feet on three sides to allow the building of that size to be built in the first place. This is where the guy wanted to add a $300,000, 6000 sq.ft warehouse extension into one of these these required setbacks, bad idea. I “tried” to explain to my boss the code situation, but having already told the client this was do-able, and more importantly, cashed and spent the client retainer check, he didnt care to here me tell him this. He says “Make it work!” I did, after banging my head against the code books and several visits to the building department I found a way by adding a 2 hour fire seperation wall (that have to go thru the roof to a 30 inch parapet wall projecting above the roof) all the way across the building bisecting it, adding big ass 90 minute firedoors for forklifts, and a smoke detection system inside the existing building warehouse, I had a proposal that would allow the client to build thier extension into the required setback, new estimated price? $1M
The client just sh*t a brick! My boss dam near had an annuerism, and I got chewed out for simply following instructions and following the code, did it matter that my hands were tied? of course not, I was expected to alter the time-space continueum and create out of thin air a universe where reality didnt apply for these idiots. Left that office soon afterwords, became an Inspector for a few years, was much happier with life after that-but thats another story.
Yep , sounds about typical ,Vic , interesting story .
My foray into "sort of " design was to design a radar lab .
A prime requisite was for an exterior wall , to allow a roller door access for large radar scanners , an adjacent external hydraulic power pack , and
finally , a dielectric window for transmission . I laid down the ideal layout , showing salient roller door and so on . Also qouted area in square feet and so much by so much .
I was "offered " 10% less square feet in the middle of a bulding .
And I only got them to shift to sense mode by quoting my disquiet that health and safety would not be happy with me irradiating the secretaries .
BUT , they got the last laugh . Gave me a mirror image of what I asked for . Heigh ho , back to the drawing board .