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Electrical Goods Storage Requirements: The 2026 Acceptance Specification

Approach yard and frontage of a Lozy-served building on the Manesar belt, with a blue bar fence and gravel yard

Electrical goods storage has to provide four things a general godown does not: floor positions that carry a loaded cable drum without the slab or the flange taking the damage, racking whose plates state a capacity in kilograms, a building that stays dry through a monsoon so conductor ends and contacts do not corrode, and a record that can name the drum and the length that left. Electrical and hardware warehousing at Lozy is scoped against those four, from ₹21 per sq ft per month in Delhi NCR. What follows is the specification itself — each requirement, its minimum, and the test to run before you sign.

Key takeaways

  • Load decides the site before rent does: a working floor at 3 tonnes per sq m, drums on steel plate or timber dunnage rather than bare concrete, and a load plate on every rack beam.
  • Electrical stock is four families — conductor on reels, cable on drums, flat cartons of switchgear, loose smalls in bins — and each fails differently in the wrong position.
  • Water and dust cost more than handling. A damp slab corrodes copper, tarnishes silver contacts, whitens galvanised conduit and softens carton board before a customer opens the box.
  • Floorplate starts at ₹21 per sq ft per month, a long-term booking at ₹1,199 monthly, a short-term hold at ₹699 and inventory-led storage at ₹4,499 — GST-invoiced, no lock-in.
Floor load3 t / sq m Drum bearingplate + dunnage Clear height5.5 m min Rackingrated in kg Humidity< 60% RH Recordsdrum + IR test
DRUM INSPECIFIED BAYSITE OR COUNTER
77+warehouses
1M+sq ft live space
₹21per sq ft / month

Most electrical storage decisions begin like a shop lease — an area, a rate, a date, and a shortlist chosen on rent and photographs. The requirements that decide whether a drum can be stored, cut and dispatched appear in week three, once the goods have moved.

A requirement sheet inverts that order: one page of numbers with a test against each, run against two or three buildings before a rate is discussed. The electrical and hardware warehousing service is built to be measured this way. The operating and cost side of the trade is the warehousing for electrical hardware guide, and the visit itself is covered row by row in the warehouse inspection checklist. This page answers what neither does: what the building and the records must provide, what minimum applies, and how to prove it on site.

What electrical goods storage has to provide

A building storing electrical goods must supply load capacity, dryness, dust control and a record of what moved — in that order of consequence, and electrical goods warehousing is scoped to those four rather than to square footage. They separate a warehouse from a room with a shutter; the paint and the parking are preference, and preference is what gets negotiated over when the four are missing.

The four families of stock, sorted by what they need from the building

  • Conductor on a reel or coil. House wire in 90-metre and 180-metre reels, flexible and control cable. Round, heavy for its diameter, and unforgiving of anything but a flat bearing surface under its full width — and it must stay off the concrete, because PVC takes a set where it sits.
  • Cable on a drum. LT power, armoured and service cable, the occasional HT drum. The only item here whose packaging is also its handling gear: it rolls, it is lifted on its flanges, and it occupies floor rather than height.
  • Flat cartons and trays of hard goods. MCBs, RCCBs, boards, modular plates, sockets, junction boxes, luminaires. Dense in value, stackable, and damaged by two things only — compression from stacking too high, and water from below.
  • Loose smalls and tools. Fasteners, lugs, glands, ties, tape, drill bits, spanners, testers. These consume bins and labels rather than cubic metres, and are the family most often left in a heap because nobody specified a pick face.

Two families go on the floor and two on the rack: a drum bay is measured in floor, a carton bay in positions above it, and pricing both on one basis makes the comparison meaningless. The building supplies slab, roof, shutters, drainage and perimeter; you supply racking, drum stands, coil cradles, bins, labels, cutting bench and stock system — unless the facility provides them, in which case their rating becomes a row on your sheet.

The acceptance specification: twelve requirements and how to test each one

This is the sheet to attach to an enquiry or carry on the visit. Treat it as a benchmark agreed in writing between you and the operator, not as a substitute for a structural, fire or electrical engineer's opinion — each of those is a separate document, listed under licences. Mark each row pass or fail; three fails and you leave.

RequirementMinimumHow to test it on the visitWhy it matters for this trade
Uniform floor load and slab condition3.0 tonnes per sq m across the working area, in writing; no crack mapping, no patch over a trench, no step over 3 mmAsk for the slab specification, then walk the floor for repair patches, efflorescence and cracks running in a line. Roll a loaded pallet truck across two joints.Switchgear cartons, conduit bundles and coil racks are dense; a slab laid for stacked cardboard settles under them and puts the rack out of plumb.
Drum bearing and floor protectionEvery drum on steel plate, timber dunnage or a cradle; never direct on the slab; plate sized to the flange contactLook at what today's drums stand on, and for a dished, polished patch in the concrete where one has sat.A loaded drum pushes its whole mass through two narrow flange arcs. On bare concrete that spalls the slab and crushes the flange, and a crushed flange never rolls true.
Clear height to the lowest obstruction5.5 m floor to the lowest truss, sprinkler head or light fitting; 4.5 m is the absolute floorLaser-measure four corners and the centre, to what is in the way rather than the eaves line painted on the wall.Rack levels are bought with height. Below 4.5 m the cartons stop fitting on the rack and the drums take the floor the cartons needed.
Racking rating and coil supportA legible plate on every beam level giving capacity in kilograms; coils on a cradle or full-width shelf, never on a single armRead three plates against the goods you intend to store. Hold a straight edge along a loaded beam for deflection.Coils and part-drums are heavy for their footprint. Racking bought for light cartons is a different structure, and the difference is safety, not cost.
Plinth, floor level and drainageFloor at least 150 mm above the yard, falls to a drain, no ponding within 3 m of the shutterLook for tide marks at the wall base, silt in the corners, a damp band along the shutter. Pour water at the door and watch it.Water arrives by gravity, not accident. Goods nearest the door — usually the fast-moving cartons — take it first.
Roof and monsoon integrityNo daylight through the sheeting, no drip stains on trusses or goods, gutters clear and discharging away from the buildingWalk the length looking up: rust bloom at fasteners, sagging sheets, a chalky line on the rack where water ran. Ask what the roof did last August.One leaking sheet over a rack of switchgear is a claim waiting for a date. A drum with water in its flange is scrap outside and suspect inside.
Humidity evidence and desiccant disciplineA hygrometer on site with a written reading; under about 60% RH through the monsoon, or an honest statement that it is not; desiccant in the packing of contacts and electronics-grade goodsAsk for the last month of readings, not the instrument. Check whether the building ventilates or closes up.Corrosion needs moisture, not rain. Contacts tarnish, copper oxidises at the cut end and zinc whitens in humid still air — invisibly, inside sealed packing.
Dust control and closing the buildingSealed floor, sealed wall base, doors that close, no grinding, cutting or cement work inside the storage areaWipe two metres of rack shelf with a white cloth. Check the wall base for a gap, and ask what else happens in the building.Cement dust is alkaline, and alkaline dust plus a little moisture etches zinc and dulls contacts. It also enters cartons sealed somewhere else.
Separation of flammables and cable compoundsSolvents, thinners, adhesives, LPG and transformer oil out of the bay entirely; a written list of what else is stored in the buildingAsk for the co-stored goods list in writing and walk the building to check it matches.PVC compounds, insulation and cardboard burn hot and give off hydrogen chloride. A fire in a shared bay is a total loss of goods that were never yours to risk.
Static-safe handling for electronics-grade goodsESD bags or conductive foam for boards, drives and sensors; no expanded polystyrene loose fill; a grounded benchAsk how a returned board is packed, look for loose thermocol, ask how the bench earth is checked.One discharge destroys a control board without leaving a mark. The failure surfaces at a customer's panel weeks later and reads as your fault.
Aisles, drum lane and vehicle face2.4 m pallet-truck aisle, a rolling lane wide enough to turn a drum, hard-standing to the gate, a gate that admits the vehicle that deliversBring the largest vehicle likely to call and watch it turn. Roll a drum to the shutter yourself, and time one load from arrival to release.Drums are rolled, not carried. A drum hand-rolled over loose ground arrives with a damaged flange, and handling time never shows on the rent.
Records and drum traceabilityA drum register with number, size, weight, seal, remaining length and insulation-resistance reading; a bin location per SKU; an export you can openAsk for one drum on the register and walk to it. Then open the export on your own laptop.Without the register you have rented a room. With it, a shortage, a warranty argument or a claim is a document rather than a conversation.

If you would rather have the sheet run with you, the electrical and hardware warehousing team will walk a shortlisted site against these twelve rows and say which ones the building fails — including the rows where the answer is no.

Taking a requirement sheet to a site visit?

Send the rows you care about with the drum count, the carton count and the city — we will tell you which facilities pass them and what the space costs.

Send the specificationCall +91 93547 12345

Coils, reels, cable drums and the floor that carries them

Drums decide most electrical layouts, because they are the only item in the building that cannot be stacked, cannot be racked to a useful height and must be moved by rolling. Get their positions right and the floor plan follows.

Floor load, and why the uniform figure is half the answer

A floor is quoted as a uniformly distributed load, which is honest for stacks of cartons and misleading for everything else. A drum on its flanges puts its whole mass through two narrow arcs; a rack leg puts a bay's worth of load through a base plate the size of a dinner plate. The uniform figure says the slab was designed for storage; the point load says whether it survives yours.

Drum positions: upright on the flange, chocked, on plate

A drum is stored upright on its flanges — the position it would roll from — on a hard level surface, chocked at the flange so it cannot travel. Laid flat on one flange for a season, the cable takes a set and the lower flange carries load it was never designed for; laid on its curved side, cable and lagging deform and the drum will not roll when you need it.

  • Plate or dunnage under every drum, spreading the flange contact, keeping it off a slab that may be damp, and stopping the flange cutting into concrete — which is what produces the dished patches in old godowns.
  • Chocks, not bricks. A drum on a slight fall will walk within weeks. Ask what the facility uses and look at whether today's drums are standing.
  • Rolling clearance, in the direction of the arrow. Rolling against the arrow unwinds the cable and loosens the lagging; rolling over a step or drain cover damages the flange edge.
  • Sealed ends. An open cable end wicks moisture along the stranded conductor, and the corrosion appears a metre inside the drum where nobody looks until the first cut.
  • Nothing stacked on top. A drum is not a table: cartons crush the outer layer of cable and hide the flange from inspection.

Reels and coils: low, supported, off the concrete

Reels are the opposite problem — small, heavy and easy to pyramid into a collapse. Store them on a full-width shelf or coil cradle so the reel is supported along its length, on a pallet or dunnage rather than the slab, and no more than two high unless the reel sits in a stillage built for it. A coil hung on a single arm deforms the inner wraps, permanently. On a rack, the coil goes on the lowest beam level that will take it, with the plate checked against the weight: one 90-metre reel of 4 sq mm wire is light, a shelf of forty is not.

Part drums, cut lengths and the balance nobody records

Every store accumulates part drums: a 500-metre drum with 180 left, a reel opened for one cut, a box with four fittings missing. These are what go missing, get stored in the aisle and get written off at stocktake, because no position was planned. Require a marked part-drum position, a tag showing remaining length and last cut date, and a cut-length log reconciling length issued against the balance. A balance that is not written down is not known, and a drum whose balance is unknown is valued at zero. Cutting earns or loses money for a contractor: a bench with a counter, four or five metres of run-out and a recorded length per cut turns a fiddly job into a repeatable one.

Racking: read the plate, not the brochure

Racking is sold by beam capacity, and the plate assumes an evenly loaded level — an assumption coils, part drums and dense cartons all break. Ask for capacity per level in kilograms, uniformly distributed or point load, total bay capacity and a current inspection record; a facility that answers all four has a racking regime, and one that answers "it holds a lot" has shelving.

Moisture, dust, static and separation: what the goods must be protected from

Four hazards do most of the damage, and only one is visible to a buyer walking through a building on a dry afternoon: water from below, condensation from above, dust from everywhere, and whatever is stored in the next bay.

What damp actually does to electrical stock

Corrosion needs moisture, and a warehouse supplies it three ways: water rising through or lying under the slab, water through the roof and the shutter line, and condensation on cold steel when warm humid air meets it.

  • Copper at the cut end. A sealed drum is protected; the cut end is not. Moisture wicks along the strands, the copper goes green, and resistance rises at exactly the joint a fitter will make.
  • Silver and tin contacts. MCB and contactor contacts, relay blades, terminal screws tarnish in humid still air. Tarnish is a resistive film, a resistive film is heat, and heat is what the customer reports as a defective product.
  • Galvanised conduit and tray. Zinc reacts with moisture and carbon dioxide into white rust, removing the protection it was there to give. GI stacked wet at the gate and closed into a bundle is white inside a fortnight.
  • Carton board and steel. Damp board loses its stacking strength, so the bottom carton crushes and passes the damp inward; a painted panel rusts from a scratch, and one against a damp wall rusts on the face nobody sees.

The response is not a promise of air conditioning. It is a floor above grade, a roof that does not leak, ventilation that moves air through rather than sealing it, goods off the slab, and — for contacts and electronics-grade parts — sealed packing with desiccant and a stated humidity target. Where a product genuinely needs controlled humidity, that is a specialist facility, and a general warehouse promising it is guessing.

Dust: alkaline, abrasive, invisible inside a sealed carton

Dust in an industrial belt is cement, fly ash, stone fines and road grit, and the cement fraction is alkaline — it etches galvanising, dulls plated parts and, with a little moisture, forms a caustic film on whatever it settles on. The minimum is a sealed floor that sweeps clean, a sealed wall base, doors that close, and a rule that no cutting or grinding happens inside the storage area. Wipe a shelf with a white cloth: grey after two metres of racking loaded last month means dust is arriving faster than housekeeping removes it.

Static and the electronics-grade exception

Part of this trade — drives, control boards, sensors, meters, modules — is electronics rather than electrical, and it fails to a hazard the rest of the stock ignores. A discharge too small to feel destroys a MOSFET or a controller input, and the failure is latent: the board passes a bench check and dies in the panel three weeks later. Boards travel in ESD bags or conductive foam, never loose white thermocol, which generates charge every time a box is opened. Anything opened for inspection is opened at a bench with an earth bond, not a cardboard table top. And the air is kept from going very dry, because dry air holds charge.

Separation: flammables, cable compounds and the neighbour problem

Electrical goods are mostly non-flammable, which is why the flammable things that travel with the trade get stored beside them without a second thought: cable-cleaning solvent, PVC adhesive, contact cleaner, paint, thinners, LPG for a soldering torch, transformer oil, aerosol cans. Each raises the fire load of a bay that is otherwise cardboard and copper, and PVC in a fire releases hydrogen chloride — corrosive, toxic, and fatal to any electronics in the building even where the flames never reach them. Require a written co-stored goods list, physical separation from solvents, adhesives and gases, and an honest answer about what the operator is licensed to hold: flammables above the small exempt quantity a workshop keeps generally need a petroleum storage licence administered by the Petroleum and Explosives Safety Organisation.

Licences, BIS marking and the documents that have to exist

No licence exists for storing electrical goods as such. Two things do have to be in place: statutory approvals for this address, and the product marking the law requires on the goods themselves — which falls on the manufacturer or importer, not on the warehouse.

Papers the premises must produce

  • Proof of lawful occupancy — a lease, leave-and-licence or ownership document, held by the entity that will invoice you.
  • Fire certificate or NOC covering this address, in date, with the premises description matching your agreement. It is the paper most often handed over expired, and the first an insurer reads.
  • Local-body trade permission, where the municipality insists on one for storage, plus written confirmation that warehousing is an allowed use on this plot.
  • Structural confirmation of floor load, and a racking inspection record where racking is installed.
  • Building insurance, and a written answer on what covers your stock inside it — whose policy, which peril, what excess, whether damp or corrosion is excluded.
  • GST tax invoice capability in the contracting entity's name, not a rent receipt from a proprietorship.

Product marking: where the BIS obligation actually sits

Wires and cables, switches, MCBs, RCCBs, sockets and conduit fall under compulsory BIS certification and carry the ISI mark on the product or its packaging. Electronics and IT goods — many of the meters, modules and adapters in this trade — fall under the Compulsory Registration Scheme administered by the Bureau of Indian Standards, with a registration number printed on the device or box. The current lists are published by the Bureau of Indian Standards. Three storage consequences follow:

  1. The mark must survive storage. A label gone soft in a damp carton, a printed box rubbed against a rough shelf, a marking covered by a repacking label — in effect, unmarked goods.
  2. Nobody re-marks anything. A warehouse must never apply, replace or alter a BIS mark, registration number or manufacturer's label, and a written rule to that effect belongs in the agreement.
  3. Repacking is a regulated act. Where goods are repacked for sale, legal metrology declarations — net quantity, packer's name and address, consumer care — pass to whoever repacks.

GST, the additional place of business, and the invoice test

If stock is stored in a state where you are registered, the premises usually needs adding as an additional place of business rather than being assumed covered by the shop's address. Your accountant can confirm the procedure, published on the GST portal, for your constitution and state. The warehouse's side is simpler: a tax invoice in the name of the entity you contracted with, with the place of supply stated correctly. A cash receipt is cheaper in the month and dearer over the year, because none of it returns as input credit.

Send the paperwork list you are working from and it comes back marked up: what the operator supplies, and what stays with you as the seller.

Records: what gets written down, and how often

Eight documents keep an electrical store honest, each with a named owner, a fixed format and a rhythm. The drum register is the one this trade cannot run without, because a drum is both a package and a stock unit: its identity, weight and remaining length are the stock record, not attributes of it.

RecordWhat it holdsHow oftenSigned off by
Inward registerReceipt date, vehicle, vendor, note or invoice number, cartons and drums taken in, damage seen at the gate with photographs, and the line-by-line check against the noteEach receipt, closed before the shift endsReceiving supervisor
Drum registerDrum number, cable type and size, manufacturer, gross weight, seal, position, remaining length after every cut, insulation-resistance reading and its dateEvery movement and every cutStock controller, countersigned monthly
Cut-length logDispatch note, drum number, length cut and remaining, who cut it, counter reading at start and finishEvery cut, same shiftCutting bench, checked by dispatch
Bin location registerEach SKU tied to aisle, rack, level and bin, with part boxes and overflow shown and the labelling convention written downAt put-away, spot-audited weeklyStock controller
Stock ledgerOpening, receipts, issues, returns, adjustments and closing per SKU, with every drum balance carried on its own lineDaily for fast movers, weekly for the catalogueStock controller, countersigned monthly
Inspection and dispatch logWhat was checked before release, the result, photographs where they matter, vehicle and gate pass, and the name of whoever released itEvery consignmentDispatch supervisor
Damage and discrepancy reportWhat was found, where, when, how many, the likely cause, photographs, and the fix with a date against itSame day above the agreed thresholdFacility manager
Statutory and safety fileFire NOC, extinguisher and hydrant servicing, racking inspection, insurance, hygrometer log, pest control and training recordsReviewed quarterly, expiry dates trackedFacility manager

Three derived numbers tell you whether the store works: drum balance accuracy, sampled monthly against the register, where a persistent gap means cuts are being made without a log; cut-length variance against the dispatch note; and the count of goods rejected at pre-dispatch inspection, which should be small and never zero, because a store that rejects nothing is not inspecting. Where stock has to run as a ledger rather than as a set of positions, that is the inventory and stock storage basis rather than plain space.

Send the drum and coil schedule ahead of the move — WhatsApp the schedule with drum numbers and weights, and positions can be marked out before the vehicle arrives.

Inspection before dispatch: the checks that stop a return

Insulation and contact surfaces deteriorate silently, so the only defence is a written check at the moment goods leave. It takes minutes per line and catches what a customer would otherwise find, at which point the cost is a return and a credit note.

  • Drum and flange condition — no bent or split flange, no lagging torn away, the drum standing true and rolling without a wobble.
  • Sealed cable ends — caps in place, no moisture inside the cap, conductor bright rather than dull or green.
  • Insulation-resistance reading — taken with a megohmmeter by the seller's own engineer, recorded against the drum, with the instrument's calibration certificate held by the seller. A warehouse is not a test laboratory, and a reading without a calibration record is a number, not evidence.
  • Length verification — counter reading against the dispatch note, and the remaining balance on a part drum re-tagged before it returns to position.
  • Packaging and marking — cartons dry, tape intact, no crush on the lower cartons, and the ISI mark, CRS number and manufacturer's label readable rather than obscured by a warehouse label.
  • Surface condition on hard goods — no white rust on galvanised conduit, no rust bloom on painted enclosures, no tarnish on visible contacts, screws present in the box.
  • Electronics-grade items — ESD packing intact, no loose fill, batch or serial recorded where the warranty needs it.

Two disciplines make the checks worth doing. The person who releases should not be the person who counted in, and every rejection should be photographed and written up the same day — because the pattern behind repeat rejections, one corner of the building, one supplier, one drum size, is what actually fixes the problem. Where the stock is service parts rather than project material, the spare parts warehousing guide applies the same discipline to a faster catalogue.

What moves the monthly figure in this trade

Six things move an electrical storage bill, and just one of them is the rate per square foot. The rest explain why two tenants on identical footprints can pay wildly different amounts in the same month.

  • Drum positions, measured in floor. A drum takes floor and gives nothing back above it; every drum position is building that cannot also hold a rack.
  • Weight band and racking rating. Dense cartons and coils need heavier beams and a slab that takes them, and heavier racking is a real input to the figure.
  • Racked versus floor storage. Height costs money and saves it: racked space is dearer per square foot and cheaper per item, while floor storage suits slow-moving goods like a drum bank.
  • Cut lengths and repacking. A bench, a part-drum position and a cut log are handling work, priced per cut or per line. Quote the volume you actually cut.
  • Duration and surge shape. A project consignment held six weeks prices differently from a standing requirement, and monthly billing is what makes the difference usable.
  • Term and location. A longer commitment prices lower per month for the same footprint, and the same shed is not the same asset on the Gurugram side as on the Dadri side.

The published bases are these. The warehouse for rent page quotes floorplate from ₹21 per sq ft per month — the basis for pricing an area against a drum count. Racked or floor area taken month to month is priced from the same starting basis on business warehousing; bulk floor areas with dock access sit on industrial and bulk warehousing; a surge-shaped requirement on on-demand warehousing; a fixed smaller footprint held longer starts at ₹1,199 per month on long-term warehousing; and a requirement carried as a ledger rather than as space starts at ₹4,499 per month on inventory and stock storage. All are starting rates, billed monthly, invoiced with GST, without long lock-in; the full basis is on the pricing page and what is free now on the warehouse listing.

A worked example: 48 drums and 1,400 cartons

Take a representative case rather than a customer. A switchgear and cable dealer holds 48 LT drums averaging 300 kg, 1,400 cartons of MCBs, boards and fittings at about 12 to a pallet, 250 bin lines of loose smalls, a cutting bench and a packing table. The drums take about 20 sq ft each including clearance to roll one out: 960 sq ft carrying roughly 14 tonnes. The cartons make 117 pallets, which at three levels is 39 positions; at a 1.2 sq m footprint and an aisle factor near 1.9 that is about 89 sq m, or 957 sq ft, carrying closer to 55 tonnes. The bins take 125 metres of shelf, which as double-sided runs at 1.8 m including the aisle is about 1,211 sq ft. Add the bench, the part-drum position, staging and circulation, and the requirement lands near 4,000 sq ft — about ₹84,000 a month at ₹21, or roughly ₹1,750 per drum per month.

That number is worth carrying into a negotiation, because it explains the surprise: the drums take a quarter of the floor and hold a quarter of the weight the racked area holds. They are the least efficient goods in an electrical warehouse and the most expensive to store per tonne — which is why a part-drum position, a rolling lane and a rule that drums are cut down rather than duplicated matter more to the bill than the headline rate. The per-position arithmetic is in the cost per pallet guide.

The five ways electrical storage fails

Failures in this trade are quiet. Nothing breaks at the gate; the goods are accepted, racked and dispatched, and the loss is discovered at the far end. Each of the five maps to a row on the sheet.

One: the floor was wet before the stock arrived

A slab at or below yard level, a drain that backs up, a shutter with a gap at the bottom. It works from October to May and fails in the first week of July, when water arrives under the pallets and the bottom tier takes it. The goods dry out, look acceptable, and fail at a counter a month later.

Two: the drum stood on bare concrete for a season

The flange crushes into the slab, the drum leans, moisture climbs the flange, the lagging rots and the outer cable takes a stain no wiping removes. On the day it is needed the drum will not roll straight and the outer fifty metres are scrap. The test takes thirty seconds with a torch.

Three: racking rated for cartons, loaded with coils

Standard beams at standard spacing, chosen because they were already in the building. A shelf designed for boxed fittings takes four hundred kilos of wire, the beam deflects, the uprights lean, and the first person to notice is the one working underneath it. If there is no plate, there is no rating.

Four: a part drum with no position and no record

The drum is cut, the balance is not written down, the drum is left in the aisle because no position was planned, and by the next stocktake nobody knows whether 180 metres are available or 60. The stock value is understated and the shortage is found on site.

Five: the neighbour's solvent

An electrical bay sharing a building with a fabricator who keeps thinners, a painter with drums of enamel, or a contractor's LPG cylinder. Nothing happens for a year, and then something does: a fire that was not yours consumes goods that were, and the smoke and hydrogen chloride from burning PVC ruin every contact surface even where the flames never reached.

All five share a shape: each was cheaper to prevent than to repair, and each was on display during a visit to anybody who knew which row to check. That is the case for taking a written sheet into a building rather than an opinion. Where a third party runs the operation rather than the landlord, the 3PL warehousing guide sets out what changes; where a project's material must sit for months before a fit-out, the contract logistics guide covers the arrangement.

The handover process, from requirement to first dispatch

Nine moves take a requirement to a working store, and sequence beats speed. The two that get squeezed when a deadline looms — a signed layout and a one-of-everything test — are precisely the two that stop the costly surprises.

  1. Draft the sheet. Twelve rows on one page, with drum weights, carton and bin counts, weekly cut volume and the dispatch rhythm. Every later argument is measured against this page.
  2. Ask for the paperwork first. Fire NOC, occupancy proof, slab and racking confirmation, the insurance position, and the GSTIN that will print on the invoice. No documents means no site visit.
  3. Pick two or three sites inside one belt, so the building rather than the drive is what you compare. The Gurgaon guide, the Faridabad guide and the Noida guide show which belt suits which trade before a day gets spent travelling.
  4. Carry a test kit to the visit. Laser measure, torch, white cloth, a bottle of water, the largest carton you ship, a known drum weight and the printed table. Write the score before leaving the yard.
  5. Draw the layout and initial it. Drum positions with plate and chock, coil racks with their beam rating, carton runs, bin naming, cutting bench and its run-out, the part-drum position — signed by both sides.
  6. Fix the rules of the floor. Receiving hours, gate cut-off, labelling, who may cut and who may release, the humidity log and the escalation contact. In the agreement, never in an email.
  7. Open access and load the master. Users created, SKU master imported, drum numbers issued, bin convention fixed — all of it before the first carton lands.
  8. Test with one of everything. A single vehicle, drum, pallet and bin line: booked in, put away, cut, recorded, released, watched. A fault found here costs a morning; found later it costs the account.
  9. Read three numbers at day thirty. Drum balance accuracy, cut-length variance and inspection rejections. If they hold, scale the intake; if they do not, fix them before volume hides the fault.

Handover is also when leaving gets settled: notice, the mechanics of stock release, how drum balances are squared up at the end, and how long the records survive and in what form. An operator who cannot answer that on day one is saving the difficulty for the day it hurts.

Moving drums and cartons in this month?

Send the drum schedule, the carton count and your city — we will confirm the positions available, the plate and racking, and the rate for the space.

Plan the intakeCall +91 93547 12345

What to put in the agreement

Ten clauses do the work in an electrical storage agreement, and the disputes that arise usually trace to a missing clause rather than to bad intent. Check each against the sheet: anything still living in an email is a courtesy, not a term, and courtesies lapse when staff change.

  1. Footprint and positions. Name the racked area, the number of drum positions, the plate or dunnage under them, and what happens if the layout changes.
  2. Floor load and racking rating, in writing. The slab figure, the beam capacity per level, who inspects the racking and how often — the clause that matters most where racking may be re-configured around you.
  3. Water and weather obligations. Who maintains roof, gutters, drainage and shutter line, and what happens if water reaches your goods. Damp and corrosion are routinely excluded from warehouse liability, so the exclusion and its remedy belong in the document.
  4. Humidity and ventilation, as a commitment or a disclaimer. If monitoring is promised, say what is measured, where, how often and who sees the log. If not, say that too: an honest disclaimer can be planned for, a vague assurance cannot.
  5. Co-stored goods. A written list of everything else in the building, the categories you will not accept beside your stock, and the separation applied to solvents, adhesives, gases and oils.
  6. Handling rates, itemised. Per drum movement, per cut, per carton in and out, per repack. An itemised rate is comparable; a bundled one is not.
  7. Cut, repack and marking rules. Who may cut, who records the balance, and an absolute prohibition on altering or covering a BIS mark, registration number or label.
  8. Records, access and audit. Who owns the data, what exports and in what format, your right to enter and count on what notice, and how long records are retained after exit.
  9. Insurance and liability for stock. Whose policy covers the goods, the excess, whether a loss is valued at cost or selling price, and what evidence a claim needs.
  10. Term, price review and exit. Notice period, how a rate change is communicated, days to release stock, the format of the final stock and drum-balance statement, and treatment of outstanding handling charges.

Two clauses deserve a second reading, because they are the ones this trade argues about. The first is water: standard terms usually exclude loss from damp, seepage and condensation, which is exactly an electrical tenant's largest single exposure. The second is drum reconciliation: if the exit statement carries no drum balances, the last cut of the tenancy becomes a negotiation. Where the space is shared, the commercial warehousing basis sets out the separation and access a multi-client building normally provides.

Where Lozy fits, and where we do not

Lozy operates 77+ warehouses and over a million square feet of live space from a Delhi NCR base, and the positions here can be scored against the twelve rows above. Billing is monthly on a GST invoice with no long lock-in. Space begins at ₹21 per sq ft per month, a long-term booking at ₹1,199 monthly, a short-term hold at ₹699 and inventory-led storage at ₹4,499; the network is mapped on the locations page and the service set on the services page.

Some requirements are simply not ours. There is no cold room, no bonded warehouse and no calibrated test laboratory; an insulation-resistance test with a traceable certificate belongs to your engineer or a laboratory. Commercial quantities of flammables need a PESO-licensed site, and a product that truly needs controlled humidity needs a building designed for it. We would rather decline than pretend.

If the requirement sits on the right side of that line, email the sheet to care@lozy.in and the reply carries the sites that clear it, the positions open and the rate — usually the same working day. How this trade stores and costs its stock is the electrical hardware warehousing guide.

The approach yard and frontage of a Lozy-served building on the Manesar belt: white and grey elevations, a blue vertical-bar fence, an unpaved gravel yard with four cars parked, conical evergreens and three flagpoles
The approach to a Lozy-served building on the Manesar belt, photographed as it stands: white and grey elevations behind a blue vertical-bar fence, an unpaved gravel yard with vehicles parked on it, conical evergreens and three flagpoles. This is the first row of the sheet in practice — the gate width, the hard-standing and the turning circle a loaded drum vehicle actually gets before it reaches a shutter, which is where a flange is usually damaged.

Related guides

Score the building, not the brochure

Send the drum count, the carton count and the city; the reply names the sites that clear the twelve rows and holds them for your inspection.

Book the visitCall +91 93547 12345

Sources. Rates, plan prices and network figures are Lozy's own published information, checked 25 October 2026. Warehouse operating practice is described by the Warehousing Development and Regulatory Authority; product certification and registration by the Bureau of Indian Standards; GST registration, additional place of business and invoicing by the GST portal; sector and policy context from IBEF and the Press Information Bureau; grid and distribution context from the Central Electricity Authority; corridor context from NHAI. The minimums in the table are drafting benchmarks for a requirement sheet; a structural, fire or licensed engineer's certificate is a separate document and remains the only proof of what a building can carry.

Last updated: 25 October 2026. If the FAQ below misses your question, call +91 93547 12345 or write to care@lozy.in.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are the minimum requirements for storing electrical goods?

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A working floor at about 3 tonnes per sq m, every cable drum on plate or dunnage rather than bare concrete, racking with a load plate on each beam level, a floor above yard level with drainage, a roof that does not leak, humidity under roughly 60% RH or an honest statement that it is not, and a drum register you can export. Twelve rows cover the whole specification, and three failures is a walk-away.

What floor load does a loaded cable drum actually need?

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A drum spreads its weight through two narrow flange arcs, so what matters is point bearing, not only the uniform figure. A floor rated at 3 tonnes per sq m with drums standing on steel plate or heavy timber is the working minimum; on bare concrete the flange crushes and the slab spalls. Ask for the slab specification in writing, then look for dished patches where drums have stood.

Should wire coils be racked or kept on the floor?

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Either, provided the reel is supported along its full width and stays off the concrete. A coil on a full-width shelf or in a cradle, on a pallet or dunnage, no more than two high, is safe; a coil hung on a single arm deforms the inner wraps permanently. Check the beam plate against the weight, because one 90-metre reel is light and a shelf of forty is not.

What humidity should storage for switchgear, contacts and electronics-grade parts hold?

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Under about 60% RH through the monsoon is the working target, with a hygrometer on site and a written reading rather than an assurance. Contacts tarnish and copper oxidises in humid still air, and the damage is invisible inside sealed packing. A general warehouse can ventilate, keep goods off the slab and use desiccant; a genuine controlled-humidity guarantee needs a specialist facility.

Does a warehouse need a BIS licence to store electrical goods?

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No. Compulsory BIS certification and the Compulsory Registration Scheme apply to the manufacturer or importer of the product, not to the building it is stored in. What the warehouse owes is that the mark survives storage: labels legible, packaging undamaged, and a written rule that nobody applies, replaces or covers a BIS mark, registration number or manufacturer's label.

How do I check a warehouse for damp before signing?

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Walk the wall base looking for a dark band, efflorescence or blown paint; look at the shutter line and the corner nearest the yard; lift a pallet that has stood a few weeks and look at the slab beneath; and look up at midday for condensation on the roof sheets. Then ask for a month of hygrometer readings in writing, and ask where the water goes when the yard floods.

What records must be kept for cable drums and cut lengths?

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A drum register carrying the drum number, cable type and size, gross weight, seal, position, remaining length after every cut, and the insulation-resistance reading with its date. Add a cut-length log with the dispatch note and counter readings, and tag every part drum before it returns to its position. A balance that is not written down is not known, and that drum is then valued at zero.

Can electrical goods be stored alongside solvents or other businesses' stock?

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Only with written separation. Solvents, adhesives, thinners, LPG and transformer oil raise the fire load of a bay that is otherwise cardboard and copper, and PVC in a fire releases hydrogen chloride that ruins contacts across the building even where flames never reach. Ask for a co-stored goods list in writing and walk the floor to check it; commercial quantities of flammables need a PESO-licensed facility.