equipment-storage-building-50SLSS

How Fabric Buildings Can Help the Mining Industry Reduce Carbon Footprint

Fabric buildings can be beneficial to the mining industry in reducing their carbon footprint by providing a sustainable and eco-friendly alternative to traditional mining structures. For example, fabric structures can be used as an alternative to permanent mining structures, such as storage facilities, workshops, or offices.

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Understanding Coverall Fabric Buildings: A Cost and Benefits Analysis

If you’re contemplating investing in a coverall building or fabric structure, you’re likely wondering about the associated costs and the advantages over traditional construction. At FastCover, we’re leaders in fabric structure production, and we want to share some valuable insights into the true value of these sheds. Let’s delve deeper into what makes these buildings cost-effective and efficient.

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Fabric Buildings: Ideal storage or warehousing solutions for mining sites

The mining industry is tough, but it also requires a great deal of innovation to keep up with the changing needs. With harsh weather conditions and hard-to-reach places, there are plenty of challenges for mine managers, from setting up office space in an abandoned shaft to getting heavy machinery down access holes before they’re frozen solid.

A more cost-effective way would be erecting structures such as portable fabric buildings, which can be easily broken down when not needed (saving money). Building a traditional structure can be another operation nightmare, and this is where fabric buildings come in. They offer several advantages over traditional structures regarding storage, warehousing or temporary office spaces for mining operations.

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Why fabric buildings are perfect for farmers

Farmers have a lot of responsibilities. They need to ensure that their crops are healthy and that the animals they raise are well taken care of. One of the challenges that farmers face is finding the right shelter for their animals and crops. Traditional farm equipment storage buildings can be expensive and difficult to construct, especially if you are working with limited space. Fabric buildings offer an affordable and practical solution for farmers who need a quick and easy way to create shelter for their animals or crops. 

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hockey rink shelter insulation

Insulated Sports Training Facility

FastCover builds a few hundred fabric covered buildings every year. A recent project is a sports training facility that we are currently completing.  The exterior of the building looks like a very standard FastCover building, 30’ wide x 45’ long. This particular fabric structure is fully portable and requires only a level surface to be mounted on. The baserail system sits on top of the ground and the entire structure is anchored using our screw anchor and turnbuckle system.  The typical all fabric roll-up door was swapped out for an insulated steel overhead door complete with electric lift and remote control openers. The accompanying walk in door is a steel insulated security door.

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Industrial Storage Warehouse

Adding On to an Industrial Warehouse

FastCover Grows with Your Project!

Your business is constantly evolving. Plans today can change tomorrow dependent on your customer’s needs or a potentially volatile marketplace. A structure on your property may be used as an industrial warehouse today and become a light manufacturing or materials staging facility tomorrow.  A structure may be in the right location but can be prohibitive to growth tomorrow. These are only a couple of the challenges and changes our clients are faced with on a regular basis that have a significant impact on the positive growth of their businesses.

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equipment-storage-building-50SLSS

Fully Portable Equipment Storage Building

FastCover recently erected the 50’ wide Straight Leg Super Series portable structure for a prominent crown utility company in Western Manitoba, Canada to be used as an equipment storage building. The building was required to be fully portable as the property is currently being rented by the Utility Company and it will be required to be re-located at some point in time. Although the FastCover 50 SLSS is portable it is imperative that the structure and foundation meet National Building Code for that specific site, which it does. FastCover engineers ensured that the structure exceeded snow, wind and rain loads for the area and also that the foundation met all the necessary uplift, down force and horizontal load requirements. With the stamped engineering documents in hand, FastCover started the fabrication process. The FastCover 50 SLSS is unique in that it provides a tremendous amount of cubic volume inside the structure. With 10’ high exterior straight legs, equipment, pallets and commercial racking can be placed in close proximity to the sides allowing for great use of space. In this particular application incorporating concrete blocks as the foundation of the storage building allows for even greater use by lifting the structure even higher. Incorporating a steel non-insulated overhead door with a chain hoist ensures that the weather elements stay where they should be… outside.

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Farm Equipment Storage Building - Interior

Doing Business with FastCover during the COVID-19 Pandemic

FastCover Fabric Structures continues to be “Open for Business” during this pandemic. We are being very diligent with respect to the safety of our staff and clients. With Sales, Administrative and Certified Engineering Technologist staff working remotely, we continue to be fully capable of providing service to you on a regular basis. Our manufacturing facility is currently only producing building components for customer orders and our installation teams are adhering to the requests and requirements of our customers to ensure their and our safety during this time.

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fabric building insulation liner

Insulating Your New FastCover Building

Many of our FastCover clients wish to insulate their new FastCovers so that they can store or maintain equipment, protect inventory in or do some light manufacturing. There are a number of ways that this procedure can be done with various aspects to heat retention. Rigid board or fiberglass are the most common methods although spray insulation has been used. Spray insulation, although an excellent source of heat retention does render the high density polyethylene fabric to become permanently rigid. In light of the fact that many of our structures are portable they are often disassembled and re-erected at another location, making spray insulation a somewhat less desirable option.

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farm-fabric-building

Extra Farm Storage Building Space in a Weekend

farm storage building
It’s like a high tech version of a good ol fashioned barn raising.  Drive past the farm yard on a Friday afternoon and you can see a front end loader off-loading the trusses and crates from a flat bed trailer.  Drive past again on the following Monday morning and that pile of steel and crates has turned into a 38 foot x 80 foot FastCover fabric covered storage building ready for use.  This is a common sight happening all across North America.  The FastCover Portable Engineered Truss Structures are becoming a popular choice for farmers and ranchers who need more covered storage space but don’t have the time to spare to fuss with weeks of building a traditional material structure.  These fully engineered portable buildings provide the strength and portability that is required to meet the varied storage needs, from equipment storage to hay and feed storage.  

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Fabric Buildings Save Maintenance and Utility Costs for Storage Buildings

Reducing maintenance and utility costs associated with your storage buildings is a smart way to improve the operational efficiency of your business operations.  Making a smart purchase decision includes not only taking into account the upfront capital cost of the building but also the on-going operational costs of the building.

Save on Construction Costs/Time

Setting aside the capital outlay for the building, there are a number savings that a FastCover fabric building will provide which may not be immediately obvious.  The first is the time and expense saved to erect the building.  Because the building is shipped in modular components, on-site construction time is drastically reduced where buildings can be completed sometimes in days as compared to weeks or months with buildings which must be completely constructed on-site.  This also means your building is finished and ready for use in your business sooner.

Save on Your Lighting Bill

Now consider the post-construction state of your building, as this is expected to last for many years.  You will have recurring monthly expenses for utilities and maintenance on any style of building.  A FastCover fabric building can help to reduce a number of monthly expenses due to the nature of the materials used to manufacture the building.  The most obvious difference between a fabric building and steel or wood construction building is the use of a fabric cover.  This fabric cover offers numerous advantages.  The first is that it allows a tremendous amount of natural daylight to pass through the cover to the building’s interior, virtually eliminating the need for daytime artificial lighting.  Even on cloudy days, there is often ample light to perform most activities inside the building without flicking on the light switch and having the power meter spinning.  In early morning hours and nighttime when we no longer have the free benefit of the suns light, artificial lights can be used more efficiently as the bright white underside of the cover reflects and disperses light so that typically fewer light fixtures are needed.

Less Heat/Cold Exchange

Unlike a metal roofed building often used for storage buildings, a fabric building cover will not radiate the heat and cold of the extreme weather conditions we experience.  Combine this with a cover that is effectively a one-piece sealed membrane and there will be substantially less air through cracks and perforations traditional buildings tend to have.

Maintenance Costs on Your Roof

Some building styles require that the roofing and siding materials such as roof tar or shingles and exterior wall paint must be frequently maintained or replaced on a periodic basis.  With a FastCover fabric building chosen for your storage building, there is no need to paint or shingle the roof and walls.  The covers should be checked for tension periodically but are otherwise virtually self maintaining.  Dirt and dust have a difficult time adhering to the polyethylene fabric and normally wind and rain are enough to blow off or wash off any that does manage to sit on the covers.

The building’s steel superstructure is post-weld powder-coat painted in our own paint booth.  The extremely smooth finish helps to prevent cover wear and protects the steel framework from rust and corrosion.

Value You Can Re-Use

One cost saving factor that few other storage buildings can match is the ability to take your investment with you if your business circumstance result in a move of locations.  A FastCover building is designed with an exclusive continuous base rail frame system which affords it a tremendous range of options in regards to foundations.  So flexible are these options that the foundation itself may be temporary and if the need arises, a FastCover storage building can be disassembled, building and foundation moved, and re-erected at the new site.

Note: link to this article from commercial equipment storage