RECD for Warehouses: Planning Around Loading Bays and Vehicles

A warehouse looks quiet from the road. Inside the gate it is anything but. Forty-foot trailers swing into the yard, reverse blind towards dock doors, wait with engines idling for a slot, and leave again, all day and often all night. Forklifts and reach trucks shuttle between the dock and the racking. Courier vans queue at the outbound bays before dawn.

Somewhere at the edge of that yard sits the DG set. When you fit a retrofit emission control device to it, you are adding hardware to the busiest, most crowded outdoor space on the site. The engineering is routine. What makes an RECD for warehouses different is the traffic around it: the swept paths of trailers, the forks of loaders, the people on foot at the dock, and the dock doors that suck in whatever air sits outside them.

This guide is built around a yard conflict audit. It shows you how to find every point where the RECD project meets vehicle movement, how to score those points, and how to resolve them in layout, protection, plume management and installation-day logistics.

Why Warehouses Are Fitting RECDs

The NCR has become one of India’s largest warehousing markets. Logistics parks line the highways around Gurugram, Farukhnagar, Bilaspur and Taoru, Kundli and Sonipat, Ghaziabad, Dadri, Greater Noida and Palwal. Many of these buildings carry DG sets from 125 kVA to 1000 kVA or more, sized for lighting, dock equipment, material handling charging, offices, cold rooms in some cases, and fire pumps.

Within NCR, CAQM Direction No. 76 placed DG sets on a route according to their kW rating. The 19 to 125 kW band was to adopt dual fuel; the 125 to 800 kW band had a choice of dual fuel or an RECD; sets above 800 kW were to carry an RECD. Gas supply is patchy in many logistics belts on the edge of the region, which pushes more warehouse operators towards the RECD route for mid-sized sets. Confirm the latest direction with CAQM and your SPCB before deciding. Our pages on DG set emission regulations and on how GRAP restrictions affect businesses using DG sets set out the wider context.

Tenants are also asking. Global retailers, e-commerce companies and third-party logistics providers increasingly include environmental compliance in their leasing checklists. A developer or landlord with compliant DG sets has one less question to answer when a large tenant’s due diligence team visits.

Who Owns the DG? Sort This Out First

Warehouse DG ownership is often split, and the RECD project stalls if nobody has decided who pays and who manages it.

Arrangement	Who usually owns the DG	Who should lead the RECD project
Single-tenant built-to-suit	Developer, sometimes tenant	Agree in lease; usually developer with tenant input
Multi-tenant logistics park	Park operator or facility manager	Park operator; recover costs through CAM charges where the lease allows
Owner-occupied warehouse	Owner	Owner
Tenant-installed DG in leased shed	Tenant	Tenant, with landlord consent for structural or yard work

Check the lease for clauses on statutory compliance, capital works and yard alterations. A short written agreement between landlord and tenant avoids disputes later. If the DG is rented, our post on whether you can install an RECD on a rented diesel generator covers the extra steps.

The Yard Conflict Audit

A conflict point is any place where the RECD project and vehicle or pedestrian movement meet. Walk the yard with the facility manager, the security supervisor, the dock or yard manager and the RECD vendor. Take a site plan, a measuring wheel and a camera. Look at the yard at three times: a quiet hour, the inbound peak and the outbound peak.

Step 1: Mark the swept paths

Trailers do not follow the painted lines. A 40-foot trailer reversing into a dock swings its front well outside the line of its rear wheels. Ask a driver, or the yard manager, to show you where trucks actually turn, wait and reverse. Mark those areas on the plan. Our concern is any part of the DG installation, especially an exhaust pipe or RECD mounted outside the DG room, that sits within or next to these paths.

Step 2: Mark MHE routes

Forklifts and reach trucks rarely leave the dock area, but they do travel to battery charging rooms, empty pallet stacks, scrap areas and sometimes to the DG area for diesel or LPG refuelling of counterbalance trucks. Mark every route.

Step 3: Mark pedestrian zones

Drivers walk from cabs to the security office or driver rest room. Dock staff walk along the apron. Contract labour gathers near the gate at shift change. Mark all of these.

Step 4: Mark air intakes and openings

Note every dock door, the driver rest room windows, office windows, air handling unit intakes and any cold room condensers. These are where exhaust can enter.

Step 5: List and score each conflict

For each conflict point, score likelihood and consequence on a simple 1 to 3 scale and multiply.

#	Conflict point (illustrative)	Likelihood	Consequence	Score	Resolution
1	Exhaust pipe crosses trailer reversing zone at 4 m height	2	3	6	Reroute pipe over DG room roof; minimum clearance above trailer height
2	Proposed RECD platform on wall beside truck waiting lane	3	3	9	Move device to DG room roof or inside canopy
3	DG outlet 15 m upwind of dock doors 1 to 4	3	2	6	Raise outlet and turn it away from docks
4	Forklift refuelling point beside DG fuel tank	2	2	4	Relocate refuelling; add barrier
5	Driver rest room window facing DG room	2	2	4	Check plume; relocate rest room ventilation
6	Crane access for fitment blocked by parked trailers	3	1	3	Book yard closure for fitment window

Anything scoring 6 or more should be resolved in the design. Lower scores can often be handled through rules and signage.

Layout Choices in a Busy Yard

The RECD sits in the exhaust line, so its position follows the exhaust route. In a warehouse yard, four options come up most often.

Inside the DG canopy or room

Where space allows, mounting the device inside an acoustic canopy or DG room keeps it away from vehicles entirely. Check clearance for maintenance and heat inside the canopy.

On the DG room roof

A roof platform puts the device above vehicle height and away from MHE. It needs safe access for inspection, such as a fixed ladder with a cage or a stair, and the roof must carry the weight.

On a ground-level frame beside the DG

This is often the cheapest option, but in a warehouse yard it puts the device at the height of a trailer bumper or forklift mast. Use it only where the yard conflict audit shows no vehicle movement nearby, and protect it properly.

On a wall bracket

Common on compact sites. Check the height against trailer and container heights and the swept path of any vehicle that passes under or beside it.

Whichever option you choose, the vendor should confirm the full exhaust route keeps backpressure inside the engine maker’s limit. Long reroutes to avoid traffic are a common source of excess backpressure. Our explainer on how exhaust backpressure affects a DG set covers the details.

Protecting the Installation from Vehicles

Even with a good layout, vehicles will occasionally go where they should not. Protection is cheap compared with a damaged exhaust line that leaves the warehouse without backup during an outage.

• Bollards. Steel bollards filled with concrete at corners where trucks turn near the DG area.
• Guardrails. Continuous steel barriers along the side of the DG area facing a traffic lane.
• Height bars. Where an exhaust pipe or bridge crosses a vehicle route overhead, add a height warning bar before it.
• Kerbs and painted zones. A raised kerb around the DG area and hatched no-parking zones in front of DG room doors and the RECD.
• Signage. “No parking”, “Keep clear: generator exhaust” and height limit signs in Hindi and English, and in any other language common among your drivers.
• Lighting. Night arrivals are common in warehousing. Light the DG area so that drivers see the barriers.

Practical guidance on loading area and reversing safety is widely available. The UK Health and Safety Executive’s pages on loading areas and on reversing vehicles are clear and easy to adapt to Indian yards.

Keeping Exhaust Away from Dock Doors

Warehouses have a particular plume problem. Dock doors stay open for long periods during loading. Inside, large volumes of air move with every forklift trip, and in summer the building may run exhaust fans or evaporative coolers that draw outside air in. If the DG outlet sits upwind of the docks, exhaust flows straight into the building.

Add to this the trucks themselves. Idling trucks at the docks already release diesel exhaust near the doors. During a power cut, a DG plume on top of truck exhaust can make dock conditions very poor for workers.

What an RECD does here

An RECD with a diesel particulate filter traps most of the soot from the DG exhaust. Aceget quotes roughly 96% particulate reduction for its silicon carbide filter, with real figures varying by engine health and fuel, and near a row of open docks that difference is easy to see. Its oxidation catalyst also acts on carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons, and many users notice less diesel smell, as discussed in can an RECD reduce diesel exhaust odour.

What it does not do

The plume still goes where the outlet points. Use the retrofit as the moment to:

• Raise the outlet above the warehouse roofline or eaves, where practical
• Turn the outlet away from dock doors and office windows
• Avoid caps that push the plume downward
• Check the prevailing wind; in many NCR sites, winter winds come from the north-west, and calm winter nights hold exhaust near the ground

Our article on whether increasing chimney height is an alternative to an RECD explains why height alone is not a compliance answer, though it still helps dispersion.

A dock-side rule for outages

Write a simple rule for dock supervisors: during a power cut, ask drivers to switch off engines while waiting at the docks. It reduces total exhaust at the doors more than any single piece of hardware.

The Warehouse Load Profile and Filter Health

The DPF cleans itself during normal running when exhaust temperature is high enough. That depends on load. Warehouse DGs often run lighter than their rating suggests.

Load (illustrative)	When it runs	Typical share of DG load
High-bay LED lighting	Whenever the warehouse is working	Modest, thanks to LED conversion
Dock levellers and doors	Short bursts	Small average
MHE battery chargers	Shift ends, night	Can be significant
Office, IT, CCTV	Constant	Small
Conveyors and sortation	E-commerce and parcel hubs	Significant where installed
Cold rooms	Pharma, FMCG and food warehouses	Significant
Fire pump	Only during a fire or a test	Large, rare

Two patterns stand out.

First, many warehouses were built with a DG sized to start the fire pump, if the fire pump is electric and backed by the DG, or sized for future conveyors that never arrived. Day-to-day load may be a small fraction of rating. Light running means cooler exhaust and slower regeneration. Our guides on understanding generator load factor and duty cycle and on whether an RECD suits a DG set that runs only occasionally explain why this matters.

Second, parcel hubs and sortation centres with large conveyor systems run much heavier loads, especially at night when sorting peaks. These sites usually suit passive regeneration well.

If your fire pump is backed by the DG, discuss it with the vendor and your fire consultant. The fire system must remain fully available, and any work on the DG must be coordinated with fire safety procedures. Never leave a warehouse without fire pump backup without the approval of the person responsible for fire safety and suitable temporary measures.

Scheduling Fitment Around Dock Slots

Fitment of an RECD usually needs the DG out of service for a day or two, after survey and fabrication are complete. In a warehouse, the bigger constraint is often the yard itself: a crane or hydra may be needed to lift the device, and it needs space.

Read the 24-hour dock pattern

Ask the yard manager for a typical day’s dock activity. An illustrative example:

Time block	Inbound	Outbound	Yard space for fitment
00:00 to 06:00	Light	Heavy (courier and line haul departures)	Poor
06:00 to 10:00	Heavy (supplier arrivals)	Moderate	Poor
10:00 to 14:00	Moderate	Light	Fair
14:00 to 18:00	Moderate	Moderate	Fair
18:00 to 22:00	Light	Heavy (store replenishment)	Poor
22:00 to 00:00	Light	Moderate	Fair

In this example, the late morning window is the best time for crane work, but fitment of a larger device may need a full day. Many warehouses have one lighter day a week, often Sunday, when inbound appointments are fewer.

Use the appointment system

If the warehouse runs a dock appointment system, block the slots near the DG area for the fitment window, and tell transporters in advance. Reroute trucks to docks on the far side of the building for the day.

Seasonal peaks to avoid

• Festival season for retail and e-commerce, typically the weeks before Diwali, when volumes peak and yards overflow
• Year-end sales and financial year end for distribution warehouses
• Summer for cold chain and beverage warehouses

In NCR, the Diwali peak also coincides with the start of winter pollution measures. If your DG must remain usable through winter, complete the retrofit before the season begins. Our GRAP rules for DG sets in Delhi NCR post explains the timing.

Backup during fitment

If the grid is unreliable, arrange a rental set for the day, parked in a protected spot that does not block docks. Coordinate with the fire safety team if the DG backs up the fire pump.

Installation-Day Traffic Plan

Write a one-page plan and share it with security, the yard manager and the vendor.

1. Cordon. Barricade the DG area and crane footprint with rigid barriers, not tape.
2. Banksman. Assign a trained banksman to guide the crane and any reversing vehicles near the work area.
3. Reroute. Close the nearest docks and redirect traffic, with signs at the gate.
4. Driver briefing. Security briefs each arriving driver at the gate about the closed area.
5. Hot work. Permit, fire watch, extinguishers, and clearance of pallets, cartons and stretch film from the area. Warehouses store large quantities of combustible packaging; sparks must not reach it.
6. Night work. If work runs into the evening, add lighting and high-visibility clothing for all staff.
7. Handback. Remove barriers only after the area is clear of tools and debris, and after the yard manager has walked it.

The RECD installation timeline covers the earlier stages from survey to fabrication.

After Commissioning: Yard Rules and Checks

Once the device is running, a few routine checks keep it safe in a busy yard.

• Weekly walk. Security or facility staff check bollards, barriers and signage, and note any impact marks.
• Monthly inspection. Check mounting, joints and cladding for damage. Our RECD maintenance guide covers technical checks.
• Data review. Review IoT backpressure and temperature trends monthly. A sudden change can indicate physical damage to the exhaust line as well as filter loading.
• Parking discipline. Enforce no-parking zones in front of the DG area. Trailers parked there block access in an emergency.
• Loaded test runs. Replace short no-load tests with loaded runs where possible, especially for lightly loaded sets.

Illustrative Warehouse Profiles

These composite examples are for illustration only.

Multi-tenant logistics park near Farukhnagar, 2 x 500 kVA

Four large sheds share a central DG yard beside the main truck circulation road. The yard conflict audit finds the planned ground-level RECD position within the swept path of trailers turning into the park.

Plan: Devices mounted on the DG room roof, outlets raised and turned away from the nearest dock row, guardrail added along the circulation road. Costs recovered through common area maintenance charges as allowed under leases. The 500 kVA DG set RECD is the reference size.

E-commerce sortation centre in Kundli, 1 x 1250 kVA

Large conveyor and sorter load, with heavy night operations. The DG sits beside the outbound dock row.

Plan: Heavy loads suit regeneration. At roughly 1000 kW, the set sits above 800 kW, so the RECD route applies under Direction 76. The main issue is plume at outbound docks during night outages, so the outlet is raised above the roof and a no-idling rule is introduced for waiting trucks. Fitment on a Sunday afternoon with outbound docks moved to the far side. The 1250 kVA DG set RECD shows typical specifications.

Pharma distribution warehouse in Greater Noida, 1 x 250 kVA

Temperature-controlled storage, modest truck volumes, DG backs up cold rooms and air handling.

Plan: RECD inside the DG canopy, with careful timing so that cold rooms stay within range during fitment. A rental set covers the day. For this size, see the 250 kVA DG set RECD page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where should the RECD go in a busy warehouse yard?

Out of vehicle paths. Inside the DG canopy or room, or on the DG room roof, are often best. Ground-level positions need a clear yard conflict audit and strong protection.

Can the RECD stop diesel fumes at our dock doors?

It sharply reduces soot and helps with odour, but the plume still follows the outlet. Raise and turn the outlet away from docks and ask waiting trucks to switch off during outages.

Who should pay for the RECD in a leased warehouse?

That depends on the lease. Developers often lead in multi-tenant parks and recover costs through service charges, while tenants with their own DGs usually pay themselves. Agree it in writing.

How long will the yard be disrupted?

Fitment usually needs a day or two of DG downtime. Crane work may need part of the yard closed for a few hours. Choose a lighter day and block nearby dock slots.

Our DG mostly idles. Is an RECD still suitable?

It can be, but light running slows filter regeneration. Plan loaded test runs and discuss the duty with the vendor.

Does the fire pump affect RECD planning?

Yes, if the DG backs up an electric fire pump. Coordinate with the person responsible for fire safety and keep the fire system fully available during the work.

Plan the Yard First

A warehouse RECD project succeeds when it is planned from the yard outwards. Map the swept paths, score the conflict points, keep the device and its plume away from vehicles and docks, and run fitment day with a clear traffic plan. Aceget supplies CPCB type-approved RECDs for DG sets from 25 kVA to 2500 kVA, with IoT monitoring for facility teams. To arrange a yard survey, contact Aceget or explore the retrofit emission control device range.