JUNE? Really?

Well, as you can tell, the last post was in February, and here we are in June.

We have really been busy cranking these projects out of here and we are finally back to normal work hours. The Benton RD project is all finished up and we have started getting pictures on two other projects in the Houston, Dallas areas. Fan us over at facebook to see more pictures, including the Benton rd project right here. We also post links to some cool architecture and some self storage news there on facebook.

Now that there is some free time floating around the office, we are gonna put together some videos of us in action. Thats right we are gonna show you (in sections of course) the process of putting our drawings and BOM’s together. Should be pretty informative. Again, if you haven’t already, go check us out on YouTube over here. We have a couple videos up already showing some cool tricks and tips we use.

River City Design is a full service drafting and design company focused on the self storage industry. You can see samples of our work on our website

Busy in self storage

Wow what a busy month, where to start. We have seen an increase in bidding this month, which is great news on two fronts, first is the tough economy, and second is that this is normally our slow time of year. We are bidding a 6 story with a 4 story branch off to one side, we are bidding a large boat and r.v. project with several mixed use types of storage, and we are bidding some standard non-climate single story bldgs in Utah. We have also had a few more inquiries from contractors down sizing their drafting departments.

Our Houston project is steadily making progress, here are some pictures:

We have uploaded a new video here and we are also debating adding this page to our website here so leave us some feedback on what you think. Our next video will probably be on the different steps of drawing up a self storage project. From the initial birds eye view down to the detail page of the complete set of construction drawings, so stay tuned for that.

River City Design is a full service drafting and design company focused on the self storage industry. You can see samples of our work on our website

1st month of ’10 gone

Well there has been big buzz about the Waikiki Self Storage and that it may need to have 600+ tenants vacate, (which is terrific news for the competition). So apparently the owner of the storage facility is not the owner of the land, and was leasing the land. More here

The first floor of our project in Houston was inspected recently and there were only minor adjustments to be made. In fact the only adjustments that needed to be made had to do with screw qty. They will pour the 2nd floor in the coming week.

Meanwhile, the 1st round of drawings on the Oregon re-re-re-re-submittals came through last week, and WOW, we are going to be adding quite a bit of steel to this project. The amount of structural “A” class steel has at least doubled, and the framing at the top floor has changed from a 5′ spacing to a 4′ spacing along with many extras. So needless to say, we have a lot of revisions to issue out.

Well our “green” light quickly skipped yellow and went straight to red on the conversion project. The good news is that the owner has placed the job on hold to potentially make it a 2-story conversion instead of just a single story. So we are anxiously awaiting news on that.

We posted our first video (finally) and you can check it out here. This video shows how to keep things organized when using upwards of 7 monitors like us using Nview gridlines. This utility is VERY helpful, and easy to use.

River City Design is a full service drafting and design company focused on the self storage industry. You can see samples of our work on our website

So where are we at?

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} catch(err) {}Rebounding, stagnant, declining, flooded market, it all just depends on who you talk to, or what article you read as to what self storage is doing. I read 2 articles in the same day that both said opposite things about credit loosening up. There is one thing I can positively say and that is River City Design is still bidding work, and our customers have a realistically optimistic outlook for at least the 1st half of the year.

There does seem to be a lot more conversions going on. Maybe its because there is a surplus of large buildings that owners are looking to exit in a hurry. Whatever the case, there seems to be more re-modeling as apposed to new construction these days. Which ever your poison, Self Storage is still holding up as a great investment.

Harold Leslie passed on Jan. 15. He was the owner of Leslie Industries. It is so hard to loose a loved one and our thoughts go out to his family. You can read more about him here.

VIDEOS, well, we haven’t forgot about them. We are just having some editing problems with our software and we are trying to get it knocked out so we can start uploading them to the web. So don’t be mad at us, instead enjoy some progression pictures from one of our projects 🙂

River City Design is a full service drafting and design company focused on the self storage industry. You can see samples of our work on our website

More plotter drama

As the title suggests, we have more plotter drama. I would have really moved on by now, but it’s a GREAT deal (if we can just acquire the thing).

We have bid (1) more project this week, a smaller 44k sq.ft. project in Texas. Approval drawings have been sent for the Choctaw retro fit roof and building addition with enthusiasm by our customer.

We have recently updated our website to include a gallery page and social links to other places on the web you can find us. Feedback and comments are always welcome :).

We have recorded a couple of videos for our YouTube channel, however we have not uploaded any of them yet, that should be coming later this week.

River City Design is a full service drafting and design company focused on the self storage industry. You can see samples of our work on our website

1st Week of ’10

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Well the 1st week of 2010 is over, and if the rest of the year will be as busy, it’s going to be a great year.

We finally got the green light on the plotter. After MUCH waiting, and back and forth with all parties involved, it looks like we are just a couple of signatures away from owning a brand new used plotter (it’s new to us). This is exciting for us because currently we have to have our drawings printed off and either picked up or mailed to us by a local reprographer. Our old machine has a lot of compatible parts to the new one, so we are going to keep it for the parts.

We are just about all finished up with the approval drawings for the 1st ’10 job in Choctaw. We have finished up the nearly 200k sq.ft. project in Spokane late in the week and the job has been so good. The customer, contractor, and sub-contractors are all ear to ear grins because this job has run so smoothly.

RCD has decided to do a small series of video tutorials on the programs we use to make our turnaround time and overall communication faster, easier, and more economical. So if you haven’t already, go subscribe to our channel so you don’t miss any upcoming videos. Click here

RCD has also been adding (slowly but surely) pictures of projects we have detailed on our fan’s page over here Click here

River City Design is a full service drafting and design company focused on the self storage industry. You can see samples of our work on our website

Happy New Year

Starting the year with a big BANG. RCD worked a half day yesterday, (and that half was planing the party). Lots of fireworks, lots of food, and a very meaningful group of friends and family.

We officially received our first job of the new year via e-mail this morning. The 1st project for RCD in this new year of 2010 is a retrofit roof project in Choctaw. We will be suppling approval drawings, permit drawings, and construction drawings with bill of materials. RCD also finished bidding a couple of self storage projects earlier this week, and our customers were very happy with our “new years” pricing.

Here are some pictures of a Self Storage facility that we completed at the start of the year, the pictures always trickle in late, enjoy:

River City Design is a full service drafting and design company focused on the self storage industry. You can see samples of our work on our website.

Truss framing

These are pictures of a project in Houston. We did the whole project but we had taken particular interest in designing a low cost truss, framed with light cold formed members. We had 16ga connection plates with through bolts connecting the truss members. The truss members themselves were 16ga box beams of different sizes. The columns were even 16ga box beam columns that were integrated into the main framing of the buildings they attach to so that we could maximize the the driveway space. After it was framed and sheeted the owner and contracted decided to add walls and a soffit and ultimately covering up the truss design. We were sad to see this as the framing details added an additional element to the architectural scope of the project, but what matters is the owner is happy.

River City Design is a full service drafting and design company focused on the self storage industry. You can see samples of our work on our website.

End of the week 12-19-09

Well the beginning of the week (returning from vacation) had an abrupt start.

I am working with a relatively new customer and we are working on a project in Oregon. The owner is a new customer for my customer, so everybody’s trying to impress everybody here for repeat business. When we started this project they asked me to supply the structural engineer of record for this project which wasn’t a problem as I work with several. So the one I decided to go with I have a great working relationship with and figured he’d be the best fit.

This project has been like banging your head against a wall from the word GO. To make a long story short, after two COMPLETE structural framing submittal’s, the engineer working for the city has been asking non-stop for our engineer’s work. “Show me calc’s on this, show me calc’s on that”. Well enough is enough I suppose and while I was on vacation, my engineer QUIT. He sent a partial payment back to my office and an e-mail stating that he would no longer be involved with this project due to the constant “harassing” from the city engineer. Sheesshh, what do you say to that?

So while I was gone, my customer has already hired an engineer to pick up where ours left off, talk about egg on your face.

On a different note, we are STILL waiting to hear about our plotter. We have entered a commitment to purchase and I think all that means is that we are not allowed to go shopping because they are eventually going to get around to selling us one? I dunno, I just know that our office is in dire need of one. Christmas is just around the corner, maybe Santa will bring us one.

River City Design is a full service drafting and design company focused on the self storage industry. You can see samples of our work on our website.

End the week with snow!!

Well like the title suggested, it snowed, which for San Antonio is kind of a big deal.

I will be out of the office on VA-CA-TION next week. So needless to say, I have been making pot after pot of coffee so we can get all these loose end’s tightened up. We don’t have long to go until we are all caught up with our work load in general.

River City Design currently has 4 open projects and we are close to finished with all of them. It’s so easy to get caught up in the back and forth between clients. Foundations on one job, decking take off on another, everybody needs things out of normal sequence to beat pricing or lead time and RCD is committed to going above and beyond to meet our customers needs. RCD knows you have a choice when it comes to your drafting and design needs and we thank you for your continued business.

Returning from vacation on the 14th of December, we should be all caught up by the end of that week and have all (4) open jobs closed, Wednesday worse case. Also, we have (2) jobs to bid upon return.

Received the Mini-Storage Messenger in the mail today. Congratulations to all of the 2009 self storage facility of the year winners and to the contractors, vendors, and people who brought it all together for them.

River City Design is a full service drafting and design company focused on the self storage industry. You can see samples of our work on our website.