We have some bad news about our new warehouse…
Watch the video below to find out more updates about the warehouse!
The Bad News
We just had a meeting with the structural engineer about our new warehouse. He came, took all his measurements, and looked at the size of the beams and everything. And then he can work out what span they can be with the rating and office. So he’s come back to me and said that the beams that Harold’s mate has used that was totally legit – but I can’t ask this guy anymore because apparently he’s passed away – the maximum span you can have is 2,300m. Now, in the office space down below is 4,700m. So he’s exceeded it by double, which isn’t that safe. But then to make matters even worse, you can see stamped on the actual beams, it says non-structural pine or non-structural wood. So you’re not even meant to use the stuff. So he’s just slapped up this mezzanine.
Now that we know this information, do we feel right having an office downstairs? What if it does collapse down one day on one of the staff members? That’s concerned us a bit.
Suggestions
Ben’s brother-in-law, Brendo, has come out and had look. Ben told him the situation and he was like, “Look, it’s pretty hard to fix this because you got to try and put stuff in and it’s just going to make a mess.” So he just suggested, “What if we just rip the whole floor down and then start again?” Which is going to cost a lot of money. But at least then the downstairs area we can do it properly because all this has got to go to council now. And council requites you to have a disabled toilet if you’re going to build a new warehouse or do any modifications. So if you do employ someone with a wheelchair later on in the future, they’ve got access to a toilet, which is fair enough. All the new warehouses have that as well.
So that gives us the opportunity. We can put in a nice disabled toilet and also a separate toilet for females if we want. And so we can adjust it a little bit and then put in a nicer kitchen and stuff. And then the upstairs, at least we’ll be able to sleep well at night because it’s going to be legit. Weve got some good ideas down in the office as well.
Our Vision
We can totally understand why Ben’s wife didn’t like this office, how dark and dreary it is. The office staff would be sitting in this office for 6-7 hours a day and that’s why she was hating on it a little bit. And you can see that it’s got a solid door and then a window. We’d like to have a doorway straight out to the warehouse in there. So the guys can come in and go straight out through the warehouse and pick up the jetter, or pick up any tools and stuff, and not have to come through the office if they don’t want to.
So what we were thinking of is putting a glass door with a window where that window is, and then making the solid door just a full glass. And you can really see the difference as we show you in the video how much brighter it is when the door is opened. Obviously, we’re going to have the lights on most of the time, but you can really see how nice that makes it just by having that door open. Just throws the light back into just about the whole office
So that’s what we think we’ll try and do: putting a glass door straight to the warehouse so the guys can just go around and pick up the jetter or do any work. And then we just make the door a full window and where the window is a glass door with a little side awning window. The whole ceiling might have to come down now, then we can start to mix stuff up a bit.
The Plan
We sat down with an architect friend to go through some of the options because we wanted a kitchen and a separate bathroom for the females. As you can see in the video is the rough plan. We’re going to change that front window and make it a glass door with another glass window next to it. Change over the solid door to a glass window to let a lot of light into the office. We’ll put a door near the roller door for the warehouse so the guys can come in and go around and pick up their jetters and not have to come through the office all the time.
We plan to create a little seating area and put the desks where we feel like it once we’re all sort of sorted. But you can see where we will put the female toilet and the male toilet with disabled toilet that you can enter from the warehouse at the back. We have a big kitchen with a dishwasher, fridge and an oven for cooking muffins or whatever, with a little seating area too for the staff to sit at.
And so if you’re in the warehouse, you can come through into the kitchen to use the female’s or the bloke’s disabled toilet if you need to have a shower or anything like that. So that’s roughly what we got. But obviously, things will have to change as we go along, because once we get the mezzanine down, we’ll know a bit more about what’s got to happen.
Stay tuned for more info in the next episode! And make sure you watch the previous episodes.
