Industrial Steel Building Project Spotlight: Global Tubing
Steelsmith furnished and erected this large, industrial warehouse designed almost entirely around a specialized Norco door. We worked with a real estate development company called Aurora Property Management, Inc. to create this building for Global Tubing, a manufacturer of giant coiled tubing and line pipe products. The Steelsmith Project Manager for this project, Matt Bailey, worked closely with the client’s architect to expertly design this building for the unique industrial operations that transpire within it.
Building Features
The first thing you probably notice about this building is how incredibly tall it is. It’s a whopping 45 feet tall, with a width of 60 feet and length of 175 feet. The second interesting feature about this building is the massive Norco door on the front. The combination of the high ceiling within this building, and the wide door opening enable the industrial company to move their giant coils in and out of the steel warehouse with a heavy lift mobile gantry crane that has a 70 ton capacity (a capability they did not have in their previous building).
3-in-1 Building Design
Although the building looks like one single structure, it is actually a combination of three connected buildings: the main warehouse, the office, and the pocket building that houses the door when it is open. The warehouse is heated to provide a comfortable work space for the employees to work in. It’s also large enough to provide ample workspace and storage space for stock and consigned inventory as well as very large machinery. The office building is 30’x80’4”x15’, and the pocket building for the sliding Norco door is 25’x8’2”45’.
This steel building has a standing seam roof. This roof type is named after the seam, which is raised instead of flush mounted. The major benefit of this roofing type is the fact that the seams, which are the weakest point of the roof, are raised above the level of the roofing panel, making the roof virtually impenetrable.
Norco Door
The Norco door we installed on this steel building is a very large, heavy uni-directional 45’x40’ sliding door with full sheathing and framing. It is divided into two leafs that collapse to one side when the door is open. The door slides into a fitted compartment within the pocket building. It’s essentially a stacking door that slides into a little building within the main warehouse building. The space fits the door perfectly and attaches to the
main building using one of its walls like a lean-to.
This building needs this special sliding door for two main reasons: It needed a large 40’ wide opening, and it also needed to be fully seal-able, to keep the building heated during the cold Winter months. Using a two-leaf Norco door enabled us to provide the width needed for the opening without increasing the building’s overall width and therefore price tag, which another door option would have required.
Steelsmith Experience
Norco Universal Door Systems design, manufacture, install and support their universal door systems, which are designed for large scale operations and mainly used in hangar and industrial applications. These doors are needed primarily in northern regions where snow can accumulate, where doors that slide open on the outside can be problematic.
The installation of these doors is difficult, given their size and infrequent application, that the company even provides supervision during installation. Since Steelsmith erection crews are so experienced installing them, that supervision is often not needed.
This industrial steel building was engineered and designed specifically to accommodate the Norco door we install on it. The heavy load created by Norco doors makes it so the building has to be designed around the Norco door. For example, struts are placed inside the building surrounding the door and the endwall has load bearing posts designed to support the incredibly large, heavy door. Other steel building companies might offer to build your steel building for less money, and leave an opening for you to install the door yourself. This option, however, is problematic because of the weight of the door.
According to our client from Aurora Property Management, Inc., the building turned out great. It is now the Northeast Service Center for Global Tubing, providing them with much more capacity and efficiency for their industrial business.
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