Working in a Storage Unit
Let's start by saying that working in a storage unit is suboptimal at best and potentially illegal at worst, but the options for workspace can be limited, especially if you're just starting a business. Most industrial spaces want a 2-3 year lease and are upwards of 50 cents a square foot. That may not sound like a lot but to get a space that serves your needs, well that will get expensive fast.
The answer to this problem for Yellow Weld was to rent a storage unit that allows us to store our tools that we don't need to keep on the trucks for field work and allows us a space to fabricate things like our handrails and tables. There are downsides to a storage unit as a shop. First off, there is likely no power in the unit, easily remedied because we always have our welder/generators on the trucks. Second, the lighting is horrible if it even has lights at all. Luckily, I have a million flashlights and work lights, so that wasn’t the end of the world for us.
It can be against policy to weld in a storage unit because of the liability of catching something on fire, luckily for us that isn't an issue where we are but it's worth keeping in mind. We didn’t have a large unit which meant we couldn’t have a big flat, and extremely useful, table. So we generally worked on the very unlevel concrete floor which makes keeping projects flat and square a challenge. But we made it work with what we had.
Finally, the weather became a concern when you're in an unheated space where you likely cannot close the door because it doesn't have any lights inside. This became problematic when it was snowing and 2 degrees out. To help with that, we occasionally fired up our propane heater outside of the unit for it to blow some, much-needed, hot air inside.
All-in-all, working out of a storage unit was our best option until an appropriate space popped up nearby. Once we were finally able to get a large enough space to actually work in, we saw a difference in finances and was able to bust out work left and right.
