Pre-engineered Metal Buildings are an Excellent Solution for Liquid Fertilizer Storage and Chemical Warehouses

Versatile Chemical Warehouse for all Agronomy Business Functions

Marcus Construction’s design-build liquid chemical warehouses are ideal for both bulk and packaged chemicals as well as seed storage and seed treating. Our pre-engineered metal buildings are a great solution to easily customize your liquid chemical and seed warehouse layout for a variety of options including separate storage areas for bulk seed, seed treating and packaged products. Marcus’ design options often help our agronomy clients centralize their business operations with an attached office on their chemical building.

Not sure where to start in designing your liquid fertilizer facility? Marcus can help. We have a talented team with decades of experience that will help you design a facility that will meet your needs. Whether you want to splash blend fertilizers and inject additives, premix chemicals for hot loading or repack bulk chemicals into shuttles. You let us know how fast you want to load –– and we will figure out the rest. We can design plumbing sizes and the pump selection to meet the gallons per minute of output you need.

Do you need a 24/7 loadout bay so your customers can load themselves? No problem, we can design and build that as well. Don’t need a turn-key liquid fertilizer solution? We are happy to provide as much or as little help as you need. Marcus has great relationships with the equipment suppliers in the industry and will partner with the right pipe fitter, tank manufacturer, and automation company that provides the best solution for your project.

With so many features to consider, let’s take a closer look at Linn Co-op Oil Co. and dissect their building to show you how we helped build a chemical storage warehouse for all their agronomy needs in Central City, IA.

 

 

The Shop Area of a Chemical Warehouse

Linn Co-op’s shop is 12,500 sq. ft. and includes two repair bays. Each repair bay features 30’ x 18’ overhead doors to accommodate the large equipment they have coming and going for repairs. The wide-open shop area accommodates toolbars and other oversized equipment to be worked on easily as they can span across the entire shop. Linn Coop has adequate space for all their necessary tools and room for a vehicle lift inside of their shop, along with a mezzanine area for extra storage of materials. With safety at the forefront of this building design, the installed ventilation system has NO2 and CO2 monitoring devices interlocked into fans and louvers in the event of needed ventilation and makeup air units temper any inbound air during the colder months. Linn Coop’s priority is safety for each employee and has equipped each area of the building with safety showers and eye washes.

The shop area also has a breakroom, bathroom and mechanical room. Again, with safety in mind, Linn Coop’s breakroom is constructed of cast-in-place concrete walls and ceiling/lid to serve as a storm shelter to provide all employees safety in events like the 2020 Derecho that swept thru the Cedar Rapids, IA area. The shop bathroom has an ADA shower for employees to use at their convenience as well as for safety purposes.

 

 

Chemical Storage and Loadout in a Pre-engineered Metal Warehouse

Attached to the shop area, Linn Coop’s chemical warehouse is 7,500 sq. ft. in area and also holds the fire protection equipment, interior containment dike, and floor space for container storage. The interior containment dike has ten 5,100-gallon stainless steel storage tanks with a catwalk system to the tops of the tanks. This area of the building also holds a repack system and floor scale.

The warehouse area contains the control room for the operator to run Linn Coop’s state-of-the-art chemical automation system which provides two bays simultaneous ability to loadout chemicals. The chemical automation system was provided by Kahler Automation and all process plumbing was installed by Precision Tank. The main chemical lines run from an exterior fertilizer dike and into the building via underground dual wall HDPE piping. The chemical bay area of the building features two Mass Flow Meters, eight places for mini bulks, and two weigh tanks. In addition, there is a restroom and mechanical room to service the warehouse area of the building.

 

 

24/7 Chemical Loadout Bay for Customer Convenience

The 24/7 bay is 2,500 sq. ft. in area and allows customers around the clock access to their chemical needs. They can access the loadout bay with an exterior mounted touch-key pad and then when inside the building use the control systems to load chemicals of their choice. During business hours – the 24/7 bay serves as the load-in lane for in-bound fertilizers and chemicals.

 

 

Fire System at a Chemical Warehouse

Linn Coop’s 30,000+ sq. ft. structure is protected by an NFPA13 compliant automated sprinkler system and fire monitoring and detection devices. The warehouse area of the building contains 30,000 gallons of onsite water to feed the sprinkler system. The overall site has a dry-hydrant system installed allowing for local fire stations to hook onto and pull 100,000 of gallons from the storage pond in the event of a fire onsite or even providing water for an event at a different location nearby.

 

 

Planning for Future Agronomy Site Growth

Connected to the building is a 2,000 sq. ft. office area that has 5 individual offices plus a reception area. The office features a men’s and women’s restroom, copier and storage space, and a breakroom. Directly north of the office is an 80’ x 14’ Fairbanks Tracker Scale with a poured concrete deck.

Overall, Linn Coop’s total site is 37 acres, allowing room for future business expansion. Currently their site boasts a 750k gallon UAN storage tank, an exterior fertilizer dike equipped to hold four 30,000 gallon fertilizer tanks, two 30,000 gallon water tanks dedicated for fertilizer operations, an LP Plant, and an NH3 Plant.

The site pavement looks sharp and is constructed of recycled asphalt millings.

 

 

Marcus Construction is a design-build, general contractor that is well-known in the agricultural industry for our dry fertilizer storage buildings. But our expertise expands to storage for other bulk material, liquid fertilizer, chemical & seed warehouses, flat grain storage facilities, along with complex renovation projects, offices & training centers.

 

Here are some other Chemical Warehouse solutions Marcus Construction has design-built:

• SilverEdge Cooperative in Strawberry Point, IA is a nice example of a smaller scale Chemical Warehouse
• West Central in Minot, ND has three buildings on their site showing the great versatility of pre-engineered metal buildings
• We have design built several projects for Nutrien Ag Solutions, Inc., view our portfolio to see how we have designed a variety of layouts for their liquid fertilizer, chemical storage and office needs