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When designing your self-storage facility
You’ll also need to leave room for vehicle access, setbacks, drainage, and other site requirements. If you’re planning a 1-acre facility where most or all of the units will be 10’x15’, you could likely fit around 100 units in it. This estimate applies to a traditional, single-story facility with drive-up access. A multi-story facility can provide considerably more rentable space on the same amount of land by adding more storage units above the ground floor.
Climate-controlled facilities may also require different layouts than those without insulation, with interior hallways and other building features affecting how much space can actually house individual units.
That said, your final unit count will depend on your property, desired storage unit mix, and local development requirements.
Calculating Storage Capacity on 1 Acre
The combination of storage unit sizes you choose can change the final unit count considerably, even when your total amount of rentable space stays the same.
The layout matters just as much as unit size. Even two properties with the same amount of buildable space can support different unit counts depending on the number, size, and placement of the buildings and how efficiently the units fit within them.
Accounting for Site Requirements
Before settling on a particular number of storage units, find out how much of the property you can actually build on. Easements, setbacks, landscaping, parking, and fire-access requirements can reduce your buildable space, and some properties, depending on geography, may also need space for snow storage.
Drainage is also critical, and detention or retention areas can take up a substantial amount of land depending on local requirements, site topography, and drainage patterns.
The property’s shape can make a difference, too. A rectangular parcel may accommodate buildings and drive aisles more efficiently than a narrow or irregularly shaped lot. Slopes and other terrain issues can further limit your options.
Choosing the Right Storage Unit Mix
Rather than fit as many units onto the site as possible, focus on the sizes tenants in your target market actually want.
Look at the sizes, rental rates, and availability at competing facilities before finalizing your plans. A feasibility study can also give you a strong sense of local supply, occupancy, and demand and help you determine how to divide your available space among different unit sizes.
If you plan to offer outdoor RV, boat, or vehicle storage, doing so can help your facility appeal to an entirely new demographic, but it may also reduce the amount of land available for storage buildings and lower your overall unit count.
Planning Your Site Layout
Once you have a specific site in mind, a surveyed plot plan can help you develop a more accurate layout. The survey should include property dimensions, recorded easements, elevation information, and other details that impact where your buildings can go.
You’ll also need to consider entrances and exits, nearby roads, drainage, and parking, and it may serve you well to hire an architect, engineer, or other type of design professional to address additional code and site requirements on larger or particularly complex projects.
With those details in place, you can move beyond the general estimate of around 100 10’x15’ units per acre and get a better idea of what your particular property can support.
Getting Help With Your Site Layout
Mini Storage Outlet offers site-layout services for smaller self-storage projects and can help you evaluate building sizes and potential storage unit configurations for your property. Once you have a preliminary layout in mind, you can use it to price out the buildings themselves.
Working through these details before construction begins can help you make better use of the space you have available and avoid having to make costly changes down the line.