Our first question this month asks about Attachment of Racking and our second enquires about Cross Support Beams.

Attachment of Racking

Q. Please can you advise if it is acceptable (indeed wise) to attach racking to a wall in addition to the floor. I have looked at the guidance for installation of racking and cannot find any advice in this respect.

A. First of all I would comment that most racking manufacturers have components such as wall ties available in their range and these do provide a level of extra security when used correctly. Normally these are used on single sided runs of racking backing onto a warehouse wall or other structure.

They are not universally specified as there is often a reluctance on the part of the building designer to accept onto his building structure any loading from the racking no matter how small. A climate of litigation and the professional indemnity insurance of the building designer leads him to be reluctant to accept the risk of absorbing loads for which he is not being paid a fee. He will often therefore decline to confirm that his building is suitable for connection to the racking which will remain as a selfsupporting structure.

Where possible connecting to the building provides a small degree of restraint to the end frame such that in the event of a major truck rack collision taking out the front upright of the rack the frame is held in the vertical for a few milliseconds rather than rotating into and across the aisle and causing a small collapse to become a large one.

This is in effect the same reason that run spacers are used in back to back racking.

The contra argument is of course that if the wall tie is too strong there is the possibility that the wall itself will be destroyed in the collapse and if there is the possibility to people working on the other side of the wall concerned then this might not be a very good idea. Modern block walls are not particularly strong however neither are they items that anyone would want to fall on themselves.

The answer to your questions therefore is “that it all depends” and all we can suggest in such circumstances that a risk assessment be carried out before contemplating such an course of action and if it seems a sensible thing to do then the building designer needs to be consulted and only with the agreement of all concerned should it be done.

Cross Support Beams

Q. We are looking for best practice and/or industry standards in regard to the cross support beam (Orange) being fitted to the last holes on the upright. I have always been told that the upright is used for FLTs to locate/guide them safely when loading high level, it is used to prevent loads falling off sideways, and the upright at the top is weaker because it does not have ties bars to strengthen it as does the rest of the structure.

A. A lot of opinions and not too many specific rules on this one I am afraid.

We have seen various applications of this from beams with the connector welded level with the top surface of the beam such that there is a level storage surface all the way along a run of racking. In this application we have seen an extra pallet squeezed into a run on the top level though this does make for handling difficulties and it is necessary to check the extra upright loadings.

We have also heard your indicated wisdom of having the upright providing visual guidance protruding through to allow the top level pallets to be positioned accurately.

The only ‘coded’ guidance we have come across on this was a requirement by Pas de Calais Region in France some years ago that the end frame in a run needed to protrude significantly above the top beam level to prevent goods tippling sideways into a gangway. We think this was about a metre in height however cannot remember the exact detail. We do not think this applied to the intermediate frames.

We suggest this boils down to your specific risk assessment for your operation and if you feel nervous about it then it is likely that this nervousness is justified.

SEMA is delighted to be working with WLN on the storage Question and Answer Column which is published in WLN on a monthly basis. On the WLN website is a list of previously published columns which we hope you find useful.

Please note that SEMA Users Club members also have access to a comprehensive range of additional storage related questions and answers.

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