Coming in from the cold
Q. I am looking to relocate about 300 pallets of wall & floor tiles which are currently stored outside. I would like to transfer these into an adjustable pallet racking system. However I have no idea of the load bearing capabilities of racking or whether there are any health and safety issues restricting the levels of racking that could be provided to store pallets with a load weight of up to 1.4tn. Based on a warehouse with an eaves height of around 8mt, it might be physically possible to get in a bay load of 4/5 levels above. In SEMA’s opinion could this work with individual pallet weights of up to 1.4tn.
A. A pallet of 1.4t is quite heavy but is not unusual and certainly can be stored in racking systems.
The first thing to do is to make sure that the pallet is suitable for use in racking. At present your client is using block stacking, where the pallet capacity is unlikely to be particularly critical; CHEP indicatesa maximum capacity of 6000kg when supported on a solid surface compared to 1500kg as a SWL so unless you are block stacking very high this should not be a problem. BS EN ISO 8611 gives equivalent information for EURO pallets.
Assuming that the pallet is suitable for use in racking the next step is to look at the racking and mechanical handling equipment.
You don’t give the size of the pallet/load but, if we assume two pallets per bay and 5 levels high (with the first two on the floor i.e. 4 beam levels) that gives a bay load of 1.4×2×4 = 11.2t per bay (5 supported levels gives 14t per bay). This is well within the capability of many commercially available racking systems.
The size of the building will be heavily influenced by the choice of handling method, which depends upon the type of mechanical handling equipment available. If you assume a “wide aisle” type operation then you will probably need aisles that are something between 2.5m and 4m wide (the exact width depends upon the turning circle of the particular forklift truck and must be checked). If you use a more sophisticated storage method e.g. VNA, live storage etc. then the space required for the FLT, and hence floor area, can be reduced – there is normally a ‘trade off’ with the cost of the equipment and/or selectivity of the goods.
You should also check the warehouse floor slab. There are many factors to consider (The Concrete Society publication TR34 is a good reference document) but essentially the floor slab needs to be flat enough to allow a forklift truck to operate and strong enough to support the point loads from the racking. Most warehouse floors should be able to deal with the bay loads described above but it should be checked.
If the pallets have been floor stacked outside for some time it might be sensible to allow them to dry out and to inspect them carefully for quality as they are brought in prior to storing on the racking
There are many Health and Safety considerations in the use of racking and probably the best place to start is the “Storage” section of HSG76 available as a free down load from the HSE website.
The SEMA website http://www.sema.org.uk/about_mem.asp offers a list of SEMA members, most of whom should be able to help with your planning
Lowering Expectations
Q We would like to move the racking down about 12 inches from its current position, as this would allow our reach fork truck to easily access the racking at a lower level, saving the time it would take to find a counter balance driver to move pallets at a higher level. We would obviously move the storage area underneath the bottom shelving, but I can’t seem to find any regulations on pallet racking only that it comes under PUWER regulations. Would moving the shelving in this way weaken the racking?
A. Your proposal sounds as if it would work as generally moving the beams down the upright will slightly increase the load that the upright can carry while raising beams would not be feasible as that reduces it. The beam capacity is unlikely to change no matter which way you move them so the upright is likely to be the limiting factor.
Unfortunately the load sign which is fixed to one of the uprights will then not be correct and you are not providing the correct guidance on the safe use of the system to your operatives to allow them to do their job safely. Normally there will be a name and address of the rack supplier with a contact phone number on the existing safe load notice and this supplier is usually happy to confirm new loading capacities and to supply a new load sign for you. Should this not be possible there are a few consultants around who are also prepared to provide load signs and if you have difficulties we will point you in the direction of some of these, however your original supplier is likely to be the least expensive source of supply.
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