Warehouses are important structural units that facilitate the effective and efficient storage of goods for businesses. When contractors embark on warehouse building, they have to make several crucial considerations geared towards constructing the most efficient, effective and cost friendly warehouses for goods. Immediately, factors such as ease of access, location and sizes are examined, and plans are made surrounding these key areas.
There are, however, several other factors that should be examined at the very early stages of warehouse building. These areas tend to contribute most to the ultimate costs of warehouse energy and operation needs. If not addressed early, the costs of the overall warehouse building operations may sharply skyrocket—a factor that is not productive for a warehouse.
Roofing
When building a warehouse, it is easy to overlook the amount of energy your roofing material will cost you. Often very vast, warehouse roofing will contribute to a large portion of the heat or lack of it within your warehouse. This is why many good contractors in the warehouse building industry will advise you to foremost use lightly colored roofing material. The light colored roof will reflect a majority of the solar radiation directly heating your roofing. You should also bear in mind that many warehouses are usually located in vast open-space areas. These tend to experience higher velocity winds. Your roofing materials, courtesy of how high warehouse roofing needs to be, will experience constant assault by these high velocity winds and will need constant damage repair. Choose, therefore, material that you are sure will be cheaper and easily accessible for the multiple repairs you anticipate.
You should also anticipate the introduction of various amendments within your warehouse roof. Machines such as horizontal and vertical lifts, all very common in warehouses, may need to be fastened at various points on your roof and columns in future. Anticipating these will guide you to the appropriate roofing style to use when expecting expansion features and such crucial considerations lurking in the near future.
Energy efficiency
Given the vast areas and open locations of warehouses, energy needs will definitely be a concern. One of the simpler ways to ensure lower costs for HVAC, for instance, is to situate fans on the roofs as opposed to wall mounts. Locating fans on the roofs ensures that the space within the building does not experience stratification of heated air. Stratification means that the air may be cooler in some levels while warmer at others—an occurrence that could ruin products stored in the warehouse or increase your energy needs.
Another smart move when warehouse building would be to provide room for the adoption of solar energy sources. Factoring in solar geometry and solar planning will lead to alternative energy source provisions, which may slash your energy budget considerably. In such vast buildings that use energy for various features, this may be a very cost saving factor.
