Saw a neat building

In my travels I came upon a neatly constructed building. This fellow poured a concrete slab with a flat piece of steel going all the way around the perimeter with bolts welded in it facing up and rebar pointing down.The upward facing bolts were on a pattern to accept the footplate of a standard 3x3-48" rack upright spaced 48" apart on the perimeter of the slab. He tied it together with cable and drawbolts x'd from corner to corner.He had a plate welded to the top to accept a wooden header to set the trusses on. The whole thing was sheeted and siding installed and insulated and made a sturdy job. He only paid $20.00 ea. for the rack as they had surface rust and would not be desirable for inside warehouse use but worked fine for his needs and allowed hin to cut at his desired height.Over the doors he used rack beams for support between the uprights and covered them with wood and vinyl. It turned out real nice.

So his "studs" or wall beams were pallet racking ? How tall ? What kind of "sheeting" ?

As to the "surface rust" pallet racking, if you're at the right auction, *like new* with zero rust and shiney paint, heavy duty pallet racking (comparable to what they use at Lowes, Home Depot, etc) can be bought as low as $50 per 4 foot wide x 3 deep x 12 tall section. I got some that cheap even at an Asset Sales auction in Charlotte (i.e. big crowd=competition)

That sounds like a great idea - recylcing old materials, strong, rot-proof, etc. But I have to assume the building codes there are pretty laissez-faire when it comes to new ideas, no matter how good.

Around here, though, I cant imagine the red tape one would have to endure to get something like that approved by the local building departments, Ladies Village Improvement Society, Aesthetic Nazis, and other rules-in-your-face, your-hand-in-my-pocket, self-interested, grubbing sons-of-b1tches.

A ... traveling ... welder/fabricator lived near here for a few years, with a portable shop built from pallet racking, 20' ocean shipping containers and HF blue tarps. The "building" was around 30' x 60'. The pallet racking and containers made up the walls, 16' tall. He had timber & OSB roof panels which in turn were covered with a couple layers of huge blue tarps that hung down the sides to form the walls as well. It was set up on an asphalt surface and nothing was attached to the ground. That was the key point, it was legal in the eyes of the building dept. because it wasn't a building. If there was a zoning or other issue he moved on before anyone complained. He had a forklift that would handle a loaded 20' container, a truck and trailer for the forklift, and hired flatbed transport to move his setup. Interesting life.

bigais,
So how was your trip to Bosnia?
Ed

The building appears to be about 20' tall, it is skinned in 1/2" plywood from the rack decking and then covered with vinyl siding. I was considering doing this in a 12' tall version since I have 250 sheets of tongue & grooved 3/4" plywod from a mezzanine. The uprights have a capacity of 27,000# ea. I am going to run this by the local zoning board to get their opinion since the whole state comes under the BOCA and the other? code, just to see if it will fly? I don't know why I want to tackle this but I thought I could use it for overflow residue from some well intentioned deals that sometimes go south.And it will also fill in the space from where we removed the inground pool.

this is actually an commond way to construct warehouseing, I know Kodak and Xerox had hugh buildings that were supported buy the racking