Thread: New Boat and RV storage

we have just started the processes for a new boat and RV storage building, got the building ordered yesterday and should be here in about 7 weeks.
It will be 40' x 120' with (10) 12' wide bays, doors are 10' x 14' tall.
It's gona be a learning process since I'm doing all the work myself, so any tips or advince is always welcome. the area I'm setting the building is fairly level and solid ground, I should have around 65' in front for turning and backing in. I plan to have lights in the units that will be set up to turn on when the door is opened, I will also have a few elec. outlets outside the building for charging batteries and such. I think this is going to go over very well, we already have people on a waiting list, ready to move in when it's finished. I'll try and post the processes as it's being build and hopefully give others some insite on what all is involve in setting up a building. We are in the county so will not have to deal with city building permits and such.

getting ground work ready for forms, planning on a 6" slab, 3000psi concrete, wire mesh and rebar around a perimeter footing and some rebar in the front were most of the impact area is. Got good ground area already so very little work needed there. The project has grown since I last posted, we are now adding another building as soon as this one goes up, since our regular storage is full we are adding a 30'x120' storage building, we will have to do a lot of ground work for this one. Gona be a crazy few months coming up

You are lucky to not have to deal with building officials. You might check with your
insurance company, as they may have some requirements, such as building meets 'x' wind speed
design, or slab/ foundation approved by an engineer, things that would occur if you were meeting
a city's building codes.
Here in Houston area, you still have to deal with the county for flood plain elevations and fire code, even when you are not in the city limits.
Are you doing a rigid frame building or a storage type building where the partitions are an
integral part of the structure?

pictures would be nice - it will be fun to follow.

Good luck and try to have fun with this one.

cramalot,

are you donig anything with regard to security, access control, and the like? Folks parking high-priced equipment are going to have certain expectations of you and your facility, which I am sure you know. There are some small things you can do that bring value to what you are offering, create additional revenue for you, and are appealing to this segment of your customer base.

Thanks for the advice Scott, the building supplier has given us stamped engineering drawings for the building, that was one of the requirments we had from a supplier, so far no strick issues from the insurace, the small county we live in doesn't have much to do with anything outside thier city limits. You do never know what's going to pop up though when your doing new construction. The building is going to be storage type not rigid frame.

Autodoc yes I do need to post some pics, my camara has died, but I will try and get something going so I can post pictures, we have been so busy with this we hardley have time to sleep. I'm doing all the forming for the slab myself with some hired helpers and trying to get the slab poured before August 20th when the first building arrives. I'm waiting for the fun to start, so far working it 100 degree heat setting metal forms have not been fun.

Alex, as far as security, we are not fenced, so no access control, we do have security cameras and will be adding more, I monitor the system remotely pretty much full time, we also use cylinder locks on our units which are very hard to break into, and we have someone living onsite and has a full view of the buildings, and the police station is a rock throw away, so with all that we have never had any issues, we have customers from surrounding towns come to store with us now because they feel safe.

Sounds like you are having WAY too much fun!

Life would be so much easier if we didn't have all the restrictions out here in CA.
A simple construction project that should only take 6 months can take up to 5 years around here!!!

This is why a lot of people are no longer building around here - too costly with all the delays.

I wish you the best of luck on this project and cooler weather!!!

If you ever get some picts, I would like to see how the metal forms are set.
Are they commercial manufactured?
Are you doing a monolith slab/footer?
We have always use wood forms but I am always looking for something better.

cooler weather would be nice, this heat has been killing us, we start around 6 in the morning and have to quit by noon, and by then we are burned out, heat index today is 115 deg. we have the forms set and now we will put in kickers (bracing) and do the grading, after that we will put in wooded boards around the paremeter for the offset for sheeting and doors, then comes the reinforcing, still got a lot to do and because of the heat we have fallin behind on the forming, I have a builder finally picked out, just hoping to get concrete poured before the building arrives, I will try and get some picks this weekend. During the hot part of the day we work inside on the new managers quarters, that's another project we have going at the same time.

the metal forms are 12" deep X 10ft lg, they interlock together and are driven into the ground with metal steaks that set in a bracket, once the form is at the right elevation you just drive a pin in that is part of the bracket, this holds the form in place, because the ground is so hard and rocky it was are only choice. I think it makes it easier to keep things straight and easier to set the elevation using the metal but they are a lot harder to handle, weighing about 100 lbs each.

The slab will be done in two pours with a keyway down the middle

Well I'll be back in Bismarck tommorrow working on finishing up the forming, I just hope we get some relief soon from this heat, I have thought about setting up flood lights and working at night, if it doesn't cool off any that is probably what we will have to do, I will definitly work on getting some pictures this weekend, I may need some help figuring out how to post them on here though since I haven't done that on this site before. Just two more weeks before the building arrives and I still got a lot of work to do.