Boat & Motor Dealer, December 2001

The 12 Commandments for Safe Dry Storage
by Gene Spinazola

Last February, the International Marina Institute held a Dry Stack Conference in Ft. Lauderdale. My task was to put together an interesting presentation, illustrated with slides and video, to make a point. That’s a tall order for many of us on the lecture circuit because we see many of the same faces at these conferences. Fortunately for me, there are marina fires each year, so I can get a new set of slides or video footage to share.

Speaking at this conference motivated me to compile a list of do’s and don’ts for the dry stack business. I have seen dry stack buildings and structures in the United States, of course, but also in Brazil, Australia, Singapore, New Zealand, and England. I realized that the problems I noticed in one country or state were the same ones I have seen elsewhere in the world.  

Most marina projects start out on the right foot, with a “Development Overview,” “Site Evaluation and Assessment,” an “Engineering Design” stage, and so on. Then we build the facility and guess what? The “where are we going to put the lawn mower?” stage develops. Remember, this dry stack building was designed for boat storage, not lawn mowers.  

Here’s my point. I don’t have trouble with storing lawn mowers in this building, if you designed the building for proper lawn mower storage. However, if this is an afterthought, I have trouble with the idea. It’s not the lawn mowers, you know. It’s the concept.

So, if I were going to build a dry stack storage building, these are the conceptual guidelines I would follow:

The 12 commandments, according to Gene:

1. Make the dry stack a single-purpose building for dry rack storage of boats.
No lawmowers and gas cans
No battery chargers
No welding machines
No Coke machines
No paint supplies, etc.

2. Allow NO ELECTRICITY in the building with the exception of “Explosion Proof” ceiling lights for nighttime boat storage operations. NO WALL OUTLETS. You hear me…NONE. If this is a single-purpose building with outside work racks, there really is no need for adding electricity to this mix.

3. Install a sprinkler system for “building and content” with in-rack sprinklers and “Auto Call” to the responding fire department. I would enhance the sprinkler system with foam injection into the water flow to improve the fire suppression capability. The two or three sprinkler heads over each boat would have a lower temperature setting than the sprinkler heads located in the roof. I would want those sprinkler heads to activate early on in a fire because they most likely will be closest to the source of ignition.

4. Design the building’s roof with burnout panel skylights, placed to give the best daytime lighting for the forklift operator and the best ventilation effect in the event of a fire. Burn out panels in this case are translucent fiberglass inserts that will melt at a low temperature and are designed to let the heat and smoke out of the building. Continue »