Renting a warehouse: what to measure and ask in writing

A warehouse viewing is short, and the decision turns on numbers that no viewing reveals. Bring yours written down, because every question on the tour answers against them: there is no good warehouse in the abstract, only the warehouse that fits your pallet, your truck and your energy bill.

• The tallest pallet you will stack, goods included, and the lift height your forklift needs to place it.
• The footprint of one pallet and how many you want per row, translated into spacing between columns.
• The trucks you receive or dispatch each week, the length of the largest one and the hours it comes in.
• The power you need in kVA: machines, cold rooms, compressors, forklift chargers, office.
• The exact destination of the space: storage, logistics, light manufacturing, workshop, with an office or without one.

The PlataStar filter uses kVA, apparent power. A distributor may state contracted demand in kW, active power: Edenor publishes its categories in that unit. Watts are also power units; amps measure current. Record the actual unit on each nameplate and supply contract. An industrial electrician must assess power factor, phases, current, simultaneous demand and equipment starting loads against available capacity; adding nameplates alone does not size the supply.

The height that matters is not the ridge line: it is the clear height, the space between the floor and the lowest element overhead, whether a beam, a duct, a light fitting or a sprinkler. Measure it in three places, because services can drop at different points of the ceiling. What has to fit inside is the stacked pallet, plus the vertical travel of the forklift to place it, plus the margin the fire rules require.

That margin is a fixed figure: the regulation of Law 19.587 requires at least one meter between the top of the stacks and the ceiling, and shelving made of non-combustible or metallic material (Decree 351/79, Annex I, art. 169).

Columns are measured center to center and checked against two things: the pallet rows you want to leave racked, and the aisle your equipment requires according to its manufacturer and safety professional. Bring your equipment measurements. A shed with perfect height and columns every few meters may force you to store at half height and lose what the listing promised.

Inspect the floor against the approved design and its current condition. Resolution 11/2026 approved CIRSOC 101-2025 nationally, but article 2 invites provinces, municipalities and CABA to adopt it: that does not establish that every existing warehouse is subject to that edition. Have an engineer identify the applicable local code, the design date and design loads. A minimum design requirement is not a measurement of actual floor capacity.

Request the structural calculation and any building load plate or certificate. They must refer to the floor and sector you will occupy, not another shed on the site. If they are missing or the rack layout changes, an engineer needs to assess capacity before signing. Cracks, repairs and settlement are part of that assessment; the listing is not a structural diagnosis.

Forklifts deserve their own question. Give the engineer manufacturer data and the planned route, together with the rack loads. The assessment must address distributed loads, concentrated rack-foot loads and wheel loads, as well as slab condition. A floor supporting stationary pallets is not thereby verified for moving equipment.

Count the dock doors against your calendar, not against the brochure: how many trucks are on site at the same time and how long each unloading takes. Measure the opening of each door and compare it with the height and width of your largest truck body, and ask for the details that make a maneuver quick: dock levelers or ramps, seals, inner gates.

Maneuvering is tested, not assumed. Walk the route your truck takes from the street to the dock, looking at the width of the access road, the gate opening, the overhead clearance and whether the yard has room to turn inside the plot. If you can, drive it at the hour you operate. And ask whether each shed is reachable by a fire truck and which route it would take: that route has to stay clear.

In CABA, confirm current loading, unloading and heavy-traffic conditions for the address and activity with AGC and the professional preparing the authorization. Give them the truck route and unloading areas. Do not assume a bay on another property or street parking satisfies the project: any shared solution needs authorization and documentation before you commit.

• Width of the access road and the entry curb, with the truck stopped.
• Overhead clearance of gates, cables and branches along the whole route.
• Turning radius inside the plot and space to reverse to the dock.
• Yard surface: material, slope and what the loaded weight will stand.
• Truck entry hours and municipal heavy traffic restrictions.

The power that decides is not the figure in the ad: it is the power contracted with the distributor. Ask to see a recent electricity bill or the supply contract, and read three things off it: contracted demand in its actual unit (which may be kW), voltage and number of phases, and whether the feed and the board leave room for your peak demand. If the shed had another use, your needs may require a supply upgrade, and that work needs an owner, a deadline and a price in the lease.

For gas, check network or cylinders, available pressure and entry point. If there are tanks, review their location and documents with an authorized installer. If you store flammables, give the professional and authority the inventory, quantities and neighboring uses on the site: a permit for another activity does not prove this operation is authorized.

Storing inflammables has numeric ceilings in the workplace safety regulation: in no case may the quantity in the work area exceed 200 liters of first category inflammables or their equivalents, no single store may hold more than 10,000 liters of that category, and inflammables stores in basements are prohibited (Decree 351/79, Annex I, art. 164). If your goods fall into that class, take the product list to the viewing.

For water, drainage, internet and telephony it is enough to confirm they exist and reach where you will use them. For works it is not: write down who does them, who pays and in what state the property is handed over.

A warehouse is an establishment under the Workplace Health and Safety Law: article 2 expressly includes deposits and annexed rooms of every kind. On that basis, Decree 351/79 devotes Chapter 18 of its Annex I to fire protection and sets five objectives: make ignition harder, stop the spread of fire and toxic gases, assure evacuation, give firefighters access and a way to extinguish, and provide detection and extinguishing equipment.

That chapter yields the things to look at on the visit. As a rule, fire sectors cover at most one floor, with exceptions for garages and justified special cases, they are separated by fire walls, and evacuating through another fire sector is prohibited (art. 171). Doors onto an escape route are of double contact and self-closing, with at least F 30 fire resistance and the rating required by the most exposed sector (art. 172).

• Extinguishers: count how many there are per fire sector and check that each shows its charge and inspection date; the minimum per floor area and per walking distance is in art. 176.
• Compliance certificates issued by entities recognized by the competent authority, item by item (art. 183).
• The fire load of each sector posted in the premises, clearly visible (art. 183).
• Personnel trained to fight fire, with a record of planned actions and of the people assigned (art. 187).

In the City of Buenos Aires the Sistema de Autoprotección of Law 5.920 is added. The law creates it as mandatory across the City, it reaches buildings, establishments and sites, public and private, it is voluntary only for buildings whose sole destination is housing, and the owners or operators answer for compliance (arts. 1 to 3). The approved system must include at least a description of the activity and of the technical protection means, the appointment and training of the people in charge in an emergency, an evacuation plan, and at least two drill exercises a year (art. 4).

The system is filed and reviewed through the official procedure of the Dirección General de Defensa Civil, on the Trámites a Distancia platform, with the documents set by Disposición 331/DGDCIV/25: a form with the technical data of the site, a risk factors form, a list of trained personnel, plans, photos and videos. Fixed fire installations and extinguishers are verified by registered companies or by the City fire brigade, at the choice of the party concerned (Law 5.920, art. 7). What must be filed depends on the establishment's group; the permit procedure is in Commercial permits in Buenos Aires. Ask the landlord for the filed system and the drill records.

In the Province of Buenos Aires the same national rules apply and the concrete requirement is set by the municipality where the shed stands, through its civil defense office and its ordinances. Before signing, ask in writing what the municipality requires for that address and for your activity, and who signs the protection system: if no answer comes, do not assume one.

No racking investment pays back if the use is prohibited on that parcel. In CABA, start with Ciudad 3D and the current table of uses for the exact address and activity. Ask the landlord for the warehouse authorization and check that it covers your operation and floor area. The procedure is in Commercial permits in Buenos Aires.

Describe what you store rather than merely calling the site a warehouse: products, quantities, storage ancillary to another business or an independent activity, refrigeration and internal processes. That lets your professional and AGC classify the use under the current planning code. Do not extrapolate product classifications or floor-area percentages from an older code version without checking their applicability to your file.

In the Province of Buenos Aires, zoning is set by each municipality by ordinance, within the framework of Decree-Law 8912/77. La Plata, for example, orders its territory with the Territorial Ordering Code of the Partido Plan (Ordinance 12,692/25) and opens the file with a pre-assessment, for which it asks for the municipal tax number, a description of the activity and a civil works plan. For activities that require it, the consultation results in the Certificado de Factibilidad de Localización, issued by the Dirección de Ordenamiento Territorial, confirming whether a commercial, service or industrial project can go in the required zone.

Location is chosen on the same terms: if what you want is a plot inside an industrial park, industrial parks in Greater Buenos Aires explains how to check that the park exists and which certificates provincial law requires; and if you are weighing a plot to build the shed on, land and land use explains how use is checked in the City (Código Urbanístico) and in the Province (Decree-Law 8912/77 and the municipal ordinance).

When you search for industrial space on PlataStar you can set two minimums: power in kVA and floor load in t/m² (metric tons per square meter). If you type the figure in kg/m², the search divides it by a thousand. A phrase like up to 500 kVA is not turned into a filter: the search reports it as an ignored term.

A listing enters the results only when its source states the fact and meets the minimum, and every stated value is shown with its source and the date it was recorded. Listings that pass every other filter but do not state the fact appear separately, below the results and outside the total, with a question already written asking the advertiser to confirm power and floor load. When the listing owner or the PlataStar team records the answer on the listing, the value is stored with its source and date and shown as confirmed by the advertiser or verified by PlataStar.

If power or floor load is a hard requirement, do not treat missing data as zero or as sufficient capacity. Request confirmation with a document and unit before shortlisting a warehouse. For desirable features you can review listings without data, but keep them pending until an answer arrives. The warehouse search helps compare declared facts; meeting a filter does not certify the electrical supply or structure. When posting a requirement, state apparent power in kVA and floor load in t/m² assessed for your operation.

Article 1209 of the Civil and Commercial Code charges the tenant for costs arising from its activity, not charges on the property or extraordinary building expenses; only habitual costs of normal, permanent services may be passed on, regardless of their label. The chapter changed in 2020 and in December 2023, when DNU 70/2023 repealed Law 27.551 (article 249). Have a lawyer review permitted agreements and the rules applying to the lease. Repairs follow separate rules: allocation is explained in Commercial leases in Argentina.

For a warehouse, write into the lease what the law does not settle for you:

1. Destination and use

   Write the exact destination, the activity, the floor area it covers and whether there is a process, racking or machinery.

2. Taxes and service charges

   Name each taxable item, say who pays it and which service charges count as habitual.

3. Works and upgrades

   Who extends the electricity supply, who pays, by when, and in what state the property is handed back.

4. Access and maneuvering

   Truck hours, use of the yard and the docks, and who maintains the maneuvering surface.

5. If the shed fails

   What happens if the property cannot be used for the agreed purpose: deadlines, notices and how it is resolved.