Mobile Shelving in Sandy, Utah

Sandy’s Storage Problem Is Finished Office Space, Not Warehouse Space

Sandy sits in the southeast corner of the Salt Lake Valley and its building stock reflects that: a civic campus around 10000 South, the Canyons School District administrative offices, Alta View Hospital and its surrounding clinics, and a large amount of professional and corporate office space in the business district near I-15. Very little of it is warehouse. Most of it is finished, carpeted, occupied floor plate where every square foot has already been assigned to people.

That changes the storage conversation. In a warehouse you can usually find a corner. In a Sandy office or clinic, the file room, supply room or district records room is a fixed box between demising walls, and it is full. The realistic options are to lease off-site storage, digitise, or make the existing room hold more. Off-site storage adds a monthly cost and a retrieval delay for records that are still active. Digitisation is worth doing but rarely removes the physical holding that has to stay for retention or clinical reasons.

Track-mounted mobile shelving is the third option. The ranges sit on carriages that roll on rails, so the room only ever holds one open aisle instead of one aisle per range. The floor area that used to be aisle becomes filing or supply capacity inside the same walls. Because these rooms are staffed and often used by the public, the way the system is driven and the way the aisle is planned matter as much as the capacity.

Accessible Aisle Planning in a Public-Facing Sandy Building

Civic buildings, district offices and clinics are used by staff and members of the public with a wide range of mobility, so accessibility is a design input rather than a finishing touch. In a high-density system the aisle only exists when it is opened, which means the accessible route has to be planned into the layout.

Planning an accessible aisle: the open aisle carries the accessible route, with clear floor space and turning space inside it.

Three things get designed together:

• Aisle width. The open aisle has to provide the clear width required for an accessible route, plus the clear floor space and turning space a user needs to work at the shelf.
• Controls. Handles or buttons must sit where a seated user can operate them, which often points toward a powered drive with controls placed inside the reach range.
• Shelf levels. Only the levels inside the reach band can be relied on for independent seated access; levels above it still store material but should not hold what a user must retrieve independently.

The applicable requirements come from the accessibility standards enforced for your project and your designer of record — we plan to them, we do not certify compliance. Our accessible aisle planning guide explains how the aisle, controls and shelf levels are coordinated.

Where Mobile Shelving Fits in Sandy

The room types in Sandy where converting fixed aisles into a single moving aisle typically frees the most usable space.

How a Sandy Project Runs in an Occupied Building

Installing in a finished, occupied building is a different job from installing in an empty warehouse, and the sequence reflects that.

A completed office file room: one open aisle, with the rest of the ranges compacted.

Occupied buildings add constraints that show up early: elevator and corridor access, protecting finished floors and walls on the route, noise windows around clinic hours or office hours, and where the existing contents live while the room is empty. In a clinic or a district office the room usually has to keep serving staff throughout, so the work is phased and the contents are staged rather than removed. We confirm all of that at the site review, and we do not commit to a duration before we have walked the route. The installation process guide covers each step, and maintenance and service intervals covers what happens afterwards.

Serving Sandy and the Southeast Salt Lake Valley

Mobile Shelving FAQ — Sandy, Utah