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Pirellipete  
#1 Posted : 22 July 2022 10:02:28(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
Pirellipete

I'm loathe to call it racking, but we've self-built and installed by our carpenters, some shelving/stores racking in our stores warehouse.

Other than the chippy scratching his head and saying, "Oooh, I reckon it'll take a ton or so"  I guess the only way I'll get to know a load limit is by using test loads up to the failure point, then coming back down to a weight with a safety factor included,

Unless anyone else has any experience or suggestions please ??

Kate  
#2 Posted : 22 July 2022 10:26:21(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
Kate

I don't see why you would want to test it to failure.  Instead you might work out how much you want to load it with and test it to that load.

RVThompson  
#3 Posted : 22 July 2022 10:28:15(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
RVThompson

In my experience, racking is for storing heavy items such as pallets, and is accessed by FLT, whereas shelving is for lighter items and is accessed by hand. So what you have is shelving, and presumably somebody requested this to be built, with an expectation of load? If you think you will be exceeding the load weight of your newly installed shelving, would you not rather have racking with a designated load limit?

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KMatt  
#4 Posted : 22 July 2022 10:28:24(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
KMatt

Hi

In a workshop I previously worked in, we went the opposite way round and look at what we wanted to store & found shelving that would take the load.  We did have bespoke metal racking made the engineers could tell us the limits because of the materials used in making it.  Sorry not much help, maybe depends on what is being stored, work out the weights you want to store on it & get an engineer/professional to test it.

peter gotch  
#5 Posted : 22 July 2022 10:42:06(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
peter gotch

Hi Pete, hmmmmmm........

200 years ago, your carpenters would have the experience to build something bespoke and you would decide that may be you had overloaded the shelves when they started to deflect, and you would either reduce the load and/strengthen the structure.

These days you would usually get somebody into put in some proprietary system racking adjusted to fit the space and you would have plenty of documentation to justify the safe working load.....BUT....you are past that point!

So....do you have a student engineer who could do drawings showing the set up and then do some calculations, based on the dimensions of the timbers taking into account its fixtures, bracing, method of securing to the building etc etc etc? May be they could get that validated by a competent engineer to come to a decision as to a defendable safe working load?

Looking at this from a pragmatic rather than legalistic viewpoint, you need to think about who or what is at risk should this all come tumbling down.

Which might drive you in the direction of taking it apart and starting again (though to be honest it would be good if the fruits of your chippy's hard work could be left standing - perhaps for the storage of things that don't weight very much - NOT a tonne!!).

achrn  
#6 Posted : 22 July 2022 11:47:55(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
achrn

Depending how big it is a tonne is not unreasonable for timber shelves / cabinets - I've had about three quarters of a tonne of fishtank on a MDF cabinet in my living room for a couple of decades, and it's only 5' long, so if this shelving / racking is a few metres long and robustly built (and critically, vertical) a tonne is eminently feasible.

(There's about 510 litres of water, plus about 130kg of glass, plus about 80kg of decor and substrate, plus probably 20kg of equipment, excluding self-weight of the cabinet itself.  To reach the botttom with my hands I have to hang on the top, so occasionally there's another 60kg of me too.)

chris42  
#7 Posted : 22 July 2022 15:01:34(UTC)
Rank: Super forum user
chris42

Also had this question a few years ago and found this on the internet. It was a little different when I found it but this is their latest take on the subject and should be helpful, once you have scrolled down a lot.

https://www.sema.org.uk/technical-faqs/

Chris

Blackburn31728  
#8 Posted : 28 July 2022 07:43:41(UTC)
Rank: Forum user
Blackburn31728

I speak from experiance on this

You have to have correctly designed racking with calcs for loadings even if it built by chippies part of design process you cannot have health robinson type stuff it will come back and haunt you if ever it failed

A desgin team can do this 

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