Top 5 Advantages Of Fabric Buildings for Road Salt Storage

Fabric buildings, also known as tension fabric structures or tensile fabric structures, are a popular alternative to traditional buildings made of concrete, brick, or steel when it comes to storing corrosive materials like bulk road salt. These structures are made of fabric material that is stretched over an engineered steel frame to create a durable and long-lasting confinement space.

There are many advantages of Britespan’s fabric buildings that make them a great choice for storage of corrosive road salt and salt/sand mixtures.  Here are the top 5 advantages.

1.  Corrosion Resistance & Rust Prevention

Metal buildings will rust.  When it comes to storing bulk road salt in large quantities, your operation wants that salt confined, dry and out of the elements.  Fabric buildings use a High-Density Polyethylene membrane (HDPE) that does not corrode, stretched over-engineered steel truss-arch frames that are hot dipped galvanized post-production to an incredibly hard, very thick zinc coating that resists rust.  The combination of these two along with the correct foundation and air flow design, you can arrive at a structure that provides the greatest resistance to corrosion possible.

2.  Clearances

Fabric Buildings have a unique ability to span wide distances without having any interior load-bearing columns that create obstructions.  Fabric buildings can also provide exceptional vertical clearances at the sidewalls and center of building to ensure that no equipment operator accidentally damages your structure from deliveries or unloading.  Lack of interior clearances are the #1 risk of long term expense of a salt storage building.

3.  The Capacity Mandate

Municipal road salt distribution facilities often will need to house 100% of the annual consumption rates today.  Relying on re-loading halfway through the season can bring considerable risk to the operation.  Designing your confinement space is not only limited to creating a larger footprint.  With Fabric Buildings, you can choose to store your road salt vertically as well.  Bunker walls inside of a tension membrane structure can reach as high as 16 feet tall without affecting the building or foundation designs!  Store more salt in the same footprint.  The key is to design your structure independently of the bunker that houses the salt.

4.  Cost Efficiency

Fabric Buildings do not have the same impact on the foundation as metal buildings.  Fabric buildings are also exceptionally well paired with maintaining wide truss spacing while still resisting high snow loads & local design requirements.  Britespan fabric buildings are fully engineered to meet site specific design criteria.  Pier-mounting a fabric building in combination with the use of precast concrete bunker walls can reduce the construction cost of your project by up to 30% while increasing your storage capacity!

5.  Safety

Across many vertical market segments, the incredibly bright and spacious interior with no columns produces one of the safest work environments possible.  Designs that prevent accidental collisions between operator’s equipment and building frames paired with naturally lit interior brightness can help reduce safety incidents to zero.

Learn more about the advantages of choosing a Britespan salt storage building or request a free building quote today by clicking here.