Maximising space is a top priority for a warehouse along with offices and laboratories considering a light industrial setting. Installing a mezzanine floor is an excellent way to unlock underutilised vertical space.
At McFeggan Brown we are often asked to include a mezzanine as part of a laboratory fit-out project. However, integrating a mezzanine requires careful structural and regulatory planning to ensure safety and compliance.
What is a Warehouse Mezzanine Floor?
A raised, semi-permanent floor structure situated between the main floor and ceiling. Mezzanines are without the exorbitant expenses and downtime associated with a typical building extension or relocation, essentially doubling your useable overhead area.
Mezzanine floors usually have four main parts and are specially designed to meet your precise footprint: Columns for supporting the entire structure, beams and joists support the decking between columns, decking is for moving around the space, and Safety accessories include pallet drop gates, railings and staircases.
Laying the Foundation
Before construction begins, understanding your building’s existing structure is vital when considering installing a mezzanine floor.
It is important to know the make-up of the concrete slab, so that any drawings showing the concrete foundation will be very useful and may mean that you can avoid the need for costly trial pits to be dug.
Knowing the slab’s load-bearing capacity early ensures the ground can safely support the warehouse mezzanine floor and the heavy specialized equipment often required in laboratory environments.
Meeting Building Regulations
Building regulations are strict when it comes to multi-level commercial structures, with fire safety being the primary concern.
Mezzanine floors must typically achieve at least one hour of fire resistance. To achieve this, the structural support pillars will need to be encased as part of the fire protection.
In a busy laboratory setting, practical safety matters just as much as structural integrity. The feet of these pillars are often recessed into the concrete by a few millimetres to avoid creating a trip hazard.
Furthermore, the underside of the mezzanine deck will need to be protected by a layer of fire-rated plasterboard—again this is to comply with building regulations.
Integrating Lab Services
Beyond safety compliance, fire protection provides a functional benefit for your infrastructure. The electrical and ventilation services are then attached to the flat surface produced by the fireboard lining.
This allows for clean routing of complex gas lines, HVAC ducting, and power data cables necessary to keep your new mezzanine floor running efficiently.
Typical Applications of a Mezzanine Floor
The most common types are as follows:
Warehousing and Logistics
The most common type of mezzanine floor by far is in warehouses where they double or triple useful square footage. This makes them ideal for bulk storage, office or welfare spaces, along with picking and packaging without the expense of moving. Free-standing steel mezzanines are structurally independent platforms that are perfect for dispatch zones, equipment platforms, and multi-tier hand-loaded storage. They are capable of transporting live loads between 300-500kg/m². Rack-supported mezzanines are integrated directly onto the top of pallet racking located on the ground level. For pick-face activities above and stock below, this is incredibly space-efficient.
Manufacturing and Production
These raised, free-standing platforms, which are specially designed for heavy-duty manufacturing equipment and assembly lines, blend in seamlessly with your current industrial operations without causing structural damage. Benefits are in three main areas. Production capacity to build specialised levels for assembly workstations, quality control inspections, or multi-shift production lines. Space optimisation by relocating smaller sub-assembly operations or raw material storage upstairs to free up important ground-level square footage. And operational flow to easily incorporate raised walkways, integrated conveyors, and cargo lifts into production operations.
Office and Workspace
Office mezzanine floors are affordable, elevated, free-standing platforms that quadruple your useable workplace without requiring you to pay for relocation. Custom-built to accommodate private offices, conference rooms, or breakout spaces while maintaining ground-floor business space, they typically cost £11-14 per square foot. Benefits include zero relocation downtime, versatile layouts to include everything you need and fast installation unlike typical additions.
Laboratories
Mezzanines for labs offer an affordable solution to increase the useable area without changing the size of your facility. Designed to support large analytical equipment, the offer the ability to divide R&D cleanrooms and establish dedicated administrative or breakout spaces.
