Also in: Disaster Response and Recovery
Relief Supply Pallet Floor Load
Relief supplies land in gyms, church halls, and offices that were never designed as warehouses.
Example
You enter
- Pallet gross weight (lb) 2300
- Pallet length (in) 48
- Pallet width (in) 40
- Tiers stacked 2
- Coverage fraction (pallet area / floor area, aisles included) 0.6
- Floor area (sq ft) 4800
- Floor design live load (psf, from the drawings) 100
You get
- Footprint area (ft²) 13.3333
- Footprint (psf) 345
- Average (psf) 207
- Footprint ratio 3.45
- Average ratio 2.07
- Pallets allowed 208
- Stacks allowed 104
No published worked example is on file for this calculation. It is checked against a hand-worked derivation of its method and an independent reference test.
Details, formula, and sources
ScopeRelief supplies land in gyms, church halls, and offices that were never designed as warehouses, and a pallet of bottled water weighs more than a ton on a 40 by 48 in footprint. A floor's design live load is a uniform pressure over the whole bay, and stacked pallets are neither uniform nor spread, so the calculator reports two numbers: the area average, which is comparable to the design load, and the pressure directly under a stack, which a thin slab or wood floor feels locally. Pallets of water at 2,300 lb, double-stacked, put 4,600 lb on 13.33 sq ft -- 345 psf under each stack. Covering 60% of a gym floor designed for 100 psf, the average is 207 psf, 2.07 times the design load; single-stacking halves it to 104 psf, still just over, and single stacks at 40% coverage average 69 psf, within it. The upper-bound count for a 4,800 sq ft floor is 208 pallets, 104 double stacks, before aisles and concentration. The design live load is the building's, taken from the structural drawings, or where they are missing from the occupancy's uniform live load in ASCE 7 Table 4.3-1 or IBC Table 1607.1, entered and cited by number rather than reproduced. Storage in a space not designed for it is a change of use a structural engineer should review. It does not determine the floor's actual capacity, check forklift or pallet-jack wheel loads, rack posts, punching shear, or slab-on-grade subgrade, or assess disaster damage, and it does not size racks. A structural engineer and the building official govern.
Formula or tablefootprint psf = pallet gross weight x tiers / (length x width / 144); area average = footprint psf x coverage fraction; each divided by the entered design live load; upper-bound pallets = floor area x design live load / pallet weight (stacks = that / tiers).
Source and editionStatics, with the design live load a USER INPUT from the building's structural drawings or, where unknown, the occupancy's uniform live load in ASCE 7 Table 4.3-1 / IBC Table 1607.1, cited by number and not reproduced.
Free accessArithmetic on the user's pallet weight and the entered design live load; no code table is reproduced.
What governsEstimate. AHJ and licensed structural engineer govern.
API field namespallet_weight_lb, footprint_length_in, footprint_width_in, tiers, coverage_fraction, floor_area_sqft, design_live_load_psf, footprint_area_sqft, footprint_psf, average_psf, footprint_ratio, average_ratio, pallets_allowed, stacks_allowed
- Standard pallet footprint 40 x 48 in = 13.33 sq ft (entered; change for other pallets)GMA pallet dimensions, by name
- Average and local pressure both matter the average is compared with the design live load; the stack pressure is a local concentrationstatics
- Design live load is entered from the drawings, or ASCE 7 Table 4.3-1 / IBC Table 1607.1 by occupancyASCE 7 / IBC, cited by number