Pallet racking in Tomball, TX.

By designing to the real weights rather than to a nominal pallet load, and by separating what genuinely palletises from what does not. Pipe, tube, valve bodies and long goods usually belong on cantilever, where the arm capacity and the upright spacing are set by the actual piece weight and length. Palletised stock — fittings, packaged consumables, spares — goes on selective at a beam capacity calculated for the heaviest pallet in the profile, not the average. The most common failure we see in supply warehouses is a beam rated for a generic load carrying a machined part that weighs several times more.

It depends on the parcel. Inside Tomball city limits the City of Tomball reviews the construction and the fire official reviews high-piled combustible storage. Immediately outside, the parcel is unincorporated Harris County, where the Harris County Fire Code requires a construction permit and an operational permit above 500 square feet of high-piled storage including aisles, with the operational permit renewed annually. Texas has no statewide commercial building-code enforcement agency, so the local office is the authority in either case, and we confirm which one from the parcel before drawings are issued.

Yes, and it needs the building measured rather than assumed. Older supply and light-manufacturing buildings here commonly have slabs whose thickness and reinforcement nobody can document, column grids laid out around equipment that has since moved, and overhead obstructions that cap usable height below the deck. We core the slab to verify thickness and subgrade before anchors are specified, survey the actual column grid, and engineer a footing or repair detail where the existing pour cannot carry the base plate load.