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.

Continue reading “Adding On to an Industrial Warehouse”

equipment-storage-building-50SLSS

Fully Portable Equipment Storage Building

FastCover recently erected the 50’ wide Straight Leg Super Series 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 are able to be placed in close proximity to the sides allowing for great use of space. In this particular application incorporating concrete blocks as the foundation allow 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.

Continue reading “Fully Portable Equipment Storage Building”

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.

Continue reading “Doing Business with FastCover during the COVID-19 Pandemic”

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.

Continue reading “Insulating Your New FastCover Building”

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.  

Continue reading “Extra Farm Storage Building Space in a Weekend”

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

Temporary Construction Warehouse

In what instances does purchasing a fabric building make sense for you or your business?  This is hard to say, but a fabric building from Fast Cover isn’t the best building for all building uses.  Fabric buildings do not make good multi-floor office buildings.  Fabric buildings do not make good houses or good apartment buildings.  But when you are putting together your construction plan for these types of projects, consider how a fabric building as a Temporary Construction Warehouse can be an invaluable asset to your plan.

Protect Your Inventory

For a large-scale building project, you likely have a large-scale timeline, stretching into months, or more.  During your construction project, you have many types of materials arriving on-site, some for immediate use, some for future stages.  Similarly, you have many types of equipment on-site, some are needed continuously and some less frequently.  With the climate we experience here, your materials and equipment may be exposed to UV rays from sunlight, wind, dust, rain, snow, and hail, maybe even all within the same week.  With a temporary construction warehouse, you can have a secure on-site storage facility to protect your inventory and equipment from weather damage, theft, and accidental damage.

Location Flexibility

Fast Cover fabric buildings are built with their unique continuous base rail system.  This feature results in incredible flexibility in both where and how buildings can be erected.  The foundation options range from ground mounts, screw anchors, temporary concrete blocks, and more.  In fact, the whole building, foundation, steel trusses, fabric cover, end walls, and doors can all be assembled, disassembled, and moved to the next project location.  This also makes the location of the temporary construction warehouse an easier decision to make as you have more flexibility to locate it where it is most suits your needs.

Rapid Assembly/Disassembly Time

One of your concerns may be the additional time needed to erect a warehouse only to have to remove it at the end of the project.  But consider how having a temporary warehouse on site will give you the flexibility of scheduling material deliveries and eliminate delays due to any weather damaged materials.  Now also consider that many Fast Cover buildings, which are shipped in modular components, can be erected with a week, often less, including placement of foundations such as concrete blocks.

A Fast Cover building as a Temporary Construction Warehouse will pay for itself many times over as you use it for future construction sites.

Top 6 Reasons Fabric Buildings are Ideal Vehicle Storage Buildings

When most people think of vehicle storage buildings often the image that comes to mind is a dark garage, cramped and dingy.  Wouldn’t you rather have a bright, wide-open space? When you are looking for your next vehicle storage building, your wish list is not as difficult to achieve as you might think.

Well Lit

Start with a Fast Cover building in mind and the first thing you will notice is how the fabric building covers permit a

Vehicle Storage Building
Wide Open Building for Vehicle Storage

tremendous amount of daytime lighting to enter the building interior and seems to fill up every corner with soft pleasant light.  So much light that there is no need for turning on the artificial lights, even on a cloudy day.  When darkness falls, the bright white underside of the covers helps to spread the light further, reducing both the number and size of light fixtures needed to light your building.  The covers include UV ray blocking properties to reduce the exposure to sunlight fading for your vehicles.

Wide Open

Personal Storage BuildingAll Fast Cover buildings are built 100% clear span.  The steel super-structure has no internal columns or low hanging rafters to obstruct your maneuverability.  Our building walls gain height very quickly leaving a maximum amount of space available for your storage needs.

Designed for Access

Commercial Storage Building
Putt’s Transfer Commercial Storage Building

Our building designs provide for flexible door locations, from large overhead doors to personnel access doors.  Configure your access need according to your traffic flow.

Sized to Meet Your Needs

portable fabric building garage or utility
18′ Wide portable fabric building garage or utility building

The Fast Cover product line has buildings available in widths from 18’ wide to 86’ wide and can be built to any length required.  We can even add on to most existing building if your storage needs grow in the future.

Put it Where you Need It

The unique Fast Cover Baserail system means tremendous flexibility regarding where the building can be erected and foundation options that range from screw anchors to concrete blocks to more permanent concrete bases.  If your business needs evolve and you need to move or re-configure your vehicle storage, a Fast Cover building can be relocated, preserving your building investment.

Durability

Our steel superstructure is powder coated at the factory after all welding has been completed to provide you with a corrosion resistant building.  The polyethelene building covers are made to withstand our harsh climate and will not rust.

Contact Fast Cover Buildings to learn more about the many advantages for your vehicle storage building.

Fabric Buildings Offer More Comfort for Animals

Whether you are raising beef cattle, exotic livestock, goats or sheep, or running a dairy farm, the comfort and health of your herd is of critical importance to your farming operation.  A healthy herd leads to a more efficient farming operation which can contribute to the bottom line of your business.  When it is time to invest in your next livestock barns consider all the ways a Fast Cover fabric building can help keep your animals in greater comfort.

Better Light Day and Night

The semi-translucent covers on a Fast Cover building allow for a tremendous amount of natural light to pass through to the interior of the building, while blocking much of the UV rays of natural sunlight.  Daytime lighting fills every inch of

Cattle Handling Barn
Cattle Barn

the building and eliminates shadowy areas.  At night, the bright white underside of the covers helps to spread artificial light throughout the building, often with a lower energy requirement and few light fixtures than a non-fabric building.  This means in the short days of our winter months it is less expensive to extend the lighting period within the building.

Ventilation & Air Volume

Properly designed livestock barns should promote good fresh air exchange.  A Fast Cover fabric building is designed with a ceiling height resulting in a large air volume inside the building.  With properly placed exhaust vents, the warm moist air common in animal housing buildings will rise upwards and be exhausted out the vents.  Cooler, fresher air is drawn in from below in what is known as the venturi effect and helps to reduce the air borne pathogens in the building air.

 

Quiet, Hushed Atmosphere

A building with walls constructed of metal brick or wood can often be noisy inside with all sounds of machinery operations or other noises echoing off the walls.  In a Fast Cover building, sounds do not echo and are dampened

Riding Arena Instruction
Riding Arena Instruction

by the fabric walls and roof cover.  This quiet, hushed atmosphere is also easier on people working within the building making it easier to communicate over distances within the building.  Buildings with metal roofs can also be quite noisy during rain storms with a metallic “ping” sound from every rain drop and a deafening sound during a hail storm which can be quite upsetting to many animals.  Rain makes a quiet hushed sound and hail bounces off without a clang.

Temperature Moderation

Many building materials will quickly radiate heat and cold from the outside of a building to the interior making it quite uncomfortable inside especially during extreme hit and cold.  The fabric covers on a Fast Cover buildings have thermally non-conductive properties which help to moderate the temperature inside.

 

More Comfort, Better Herd

A more content, low-stressed herd will feed on a regular basis which promotes weight gain.

For dairy cattle or any animals raising young, natural light and ventilation can contribute to higher milk production helping the off-spring gain weight and strength early in life.

Contact Fast Cover Buildings to learn more about the many advantages for your farm.

Top 5 Fabric Building Advantages for Remote Locations

Business operation in remote locations pose a number of challenges to many organizations, including those in the resource sectors such as Oil & Gas, Mining, Agriculture, Surveying, or Transportation.  Modern building technologies such as FastCover Fabric Buildings offer a number of unique advantages that are well suited for use in remote locations with limited access to resources and labour.

1. Portable Modular Building Design

A FastCover fabric building is made of modular components, steel truss sections, end wall and frame components, foundation connections, and a fabric cover. All of these components are designed to be transported efficiently to almost any location and then assembled on site.  The steel truss components are all factory welded and then are bolted together on-site meaning no requirement for on-site welding or steel fabrication. FastCover buildings can also be disassembled back to their component parts and then re-assembled at a different location. This portable aspect of FastCover buildings allows them to be a valuable asset as work operations move from one site to another.  See More.

2. Flexible Foundation Options

FastCover buildings feature the exclusive continuous Base Rail system so in many applications they can be installed without a permanent foundation.  This results in numerous foundation options to suit the building location and purpose such as using high strength screw anchors for ground mount applications or many temporary foundations such as concrete blocks or pressure treated posts using the Base Rail bracket. If the build is later required at another location, often the foundation or anchors can be reused as well.  See More.

 

 

3. Quick Installation by Our Team

A workshop or lumber building that normally takes months to complete takes days with a fabric building. Our crew comes to your location to level and install your fabric building under your specifications. Time is money, don’t let construction put a restraint on your productivity or a strain on your resources.  See More.

 

 

4. Low Electrical Requirements

Unlike other buildings, FastCover fabric structures use a material that is weatherproof, retains temperature, and also lets natural Cold Storage Buldinglight through. This reduces the need for lighting during the day and temperature regulation. For many building uses in remote locations such as warehousing, equipment storage or equipment storage, the light transmitted through the cover during daylight hours is often enough and the bright white underside of the covers helps to distribute artificial lighting lessening the number of lighting fixture and power requirements. See More.

 

 

5. Rugged and Durable

FastCover fabric buildings are designed and built in Manitoba, Canada and are ready to stand up to the harsh environmental

Mine Site Storage Buildings
Mine Site Storage Buildings

conditions of some remote locations.  Weather factors such as extreme winter cold or blazing summertime heat are no concern for the engineered fabric covers of the buildings. Elements such as water, dust, sand slide off the building so little maintenance is required on the building covers.  The building’s steel superstructure is welded in factory conditions and then post weld powder coat painted to protect from exposure to harsh environments, inside and outside the building. See More.

 

 

Making the decision to build a FastCover fabric building in your remote locations means you have chosen a building that will prove it’s value through savings in time and money and will perform beyond your expectations.

Lease Your New FastCover

FastCover Grows with Your Business!

When your business, farm or enterprise is growing at a rapid rate, it is generally a result of you, as an entrepreneur, pouring all your energy into that growth. Attempting to determine what the next step is to house all that growth can be a daunting task. Do I add onto my building, do I move to larger facilities, how do I become more efficient, are all questions swirling through your mind. As your business grows, plans change, and you need to be able to shift your thought process just as fast. The beauty of a FastCover portable structure is that it allows you to accommodate the need today and be re-located, added onto, or re-configured to accommodate tomorrow’s needs. At FastCover we grow with your business!

As a family owned privately held business, FastCover understands that cash flow and your passion drives growth and that there is not always an abundance of free cash to renovate, upgrade or purchase / rent new facilities. Leasing a New FastCover can assist you by providing excellent space for light manufacturing and assembly, or storage of raw material, parts, equipment and finished goods. Leasing allows you to budget for a reasonable fixed “no surprises” payment schedule where all payments can be fully expensed by your business, farm or enterprise.

Call FastCover today to discuss your fabric structure project with us. We always appreciate the opportunity to be taken into consideration to work with you assisting in the right solution for You!

1-866-657-7172 fastcoverbuildings.com info@fastcover.ca