Any problem ordering supplies to a residential address? (moving to a cheap area to start a lab)

[Sergii Pochekailov]

Hi All,

I am planning to set up a DIY bio/chemistry lab. To do that, I plan to move to an inexpensive area (San Antonio, TX) and rent a house to live an work in. I am planning to setup my lab in one of the bedrooms or in the garage of that house.

My biggest concern is whether the major biotech suppliers would ship me the stuff to my residential address? I am thinking of major suppliers like Thermo Fisher, GE Healthcare and Sigma. I don't want to move through entire country, sign a lease only to learn that I can not practically do anything. 

I am self-employed and can work from anywhere in US. 

Please let me know your experience. Was the delivery ever a problem for you? How did you overcome it?

Sergii

[Alpha Centuri]

yes, that is an issue, most will not ship to residential, even basic harmless chemicals you can get off ebay. if your doing anything serious, you probably at least need a simple business office just for the address, or know someone else who has a commercial address they will let you use.

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[Philipp Boeing]

Hi Sergii,

We (Bento Bio) ship to residential addresses (the reason we started the company is to create infrastructure for DIYbio). 

We only focus on the PCR workflow from DNA extraction to electrophoresis, so our supplies are geared towards that. What kinds of supplies are you looking for?

Philipp

[Sergii Pochekailov]

Thanks for letting me know!

I am working on automating molecular biology, making all-purpose robots (https://cartesianrobotics.xyz/). I need eventually to test them with the real experiments, this is why I need a lab. I also need to compare the robots with a live person for efficiency, speed, and accuracy. I am working now on affordable automation of the DNA cleanup with the magnetic beads.

I need to order the same supplies as the other biotech uses, so, unfortunately, I am stuck with the standard suppliers that apparently do not ship to residential.

[Reginald Smith]

Hi, the last chemical supplier that would ship basic chemicals to residences was Elemental Scientific and they were bought out. I would suggest setting up a LLC and then contracting with a local 3PL fulfillment warehouse or public warehouse that can receive in goods and possibly store them (for a monthly fee). Have the suppliers ship to the LLC c/o the warehouse. Granted, many warehouses want a minimum sized account (by volume or spend) which may not work for your needs and they won't be happy if you are bringing in anything that might bring regulatory/law enforcement scrutiny (think extremely hazardous, explosive, or pathogens) but basic DIY Bio reagents should not be an issue.

Here is a possible candidate in San Antonio but these exist everywhere:

https://www.southernwd.com/

Typical charges are a monthly flat fee + per pallet storage charges per month plus in/out fees for each item you receive or ship.

Your other option is to go on Craigslist and look for people renting shared or mini-office space. This boomed in the pandemic and it is basically an office with a desk in chair in an office park that you can rent month-to-month or as needed. You can receive packages in there under the LLC.

All that being said, be very mindful of codes and zoning about lab related stuff wherever you live. I would join sciencemadness.org and ask about home labs since a lot of them are doing mostly chemistry on the side and a big contingent of the site is adamant on not having labs in homes or apartments due to fire/fume risk and snoopy neighbors. Fire/fume is a lot less likely with basic DIY Bio but cross your t's and dot your i's.

Good luck,

Reggie

[Hans Wilms]

Hey,

Here's a list I put together (below). Hope it saves you the time I put into making it, lol

You can also try sending stuff to a local makerspace or something.

Where to buy things for DIY bio.

These are places that sell to residential addresses:

1.    http://www.enzymax.net -mini midi maxiprep columns(sells all plasmid prep stuff, can do gene synthesis). Also sells ni-NTA syringe columns.

2.    oligos.com

3.    the-odin.com

4.    https://www.geneandcell.com

5.    novelab.com -Ni-NTA columns, cheap as fuck

6.    epoch sciences -miniprep columns and RNase. Can do oligos for orders over >24EA. Can do gene synthesis for cheapest price I’ve seen yet, $0.28/bp.

7.    alibiba.com for cheap, questionable silica columns for nucleic acid extraction. Better to buy from epoch

8.    Looks like Genscript is gonna send primers to my house? We’ll see (20210205)

9.    Also seems like Biolegio will send me primers.20210419: They WILL! Best prices so far. Not super responsive.

10.  CubeBiotech sold me some 5ml empty affinity columns.

11.  G-biosciences WILL deliver to your house!! They have antibiotics and dNTPs and stuff!

 

Places that DON’T sell (tried):

1.    MCLAB

2.    Sigma, big guys, etc.

3.    www.abmgood.com  

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/diybio/4be53313-6cb0-4495-b29f-cf5f21ae545an%40googlegroups.com.

--

-Hans T. Wilms
Cell: 404-322-5824

[John Griessen]

On 1/4/22 01:45, Sergii Pochekailov wrote:
>
> Please let me know your experience. Was the delivery ever a problem for you? How did you overcome it?

I had no trouble creating a business identity in Austin TX -- that's what I'd do. Texas has an anti lab glass law where you have
to list types of glass used to make street drugs. No flasks or condensers allowed without reporting trades to the Texas DPS govt.
agency.

On 1/5/22 02:32, Sergii Pochekailov wrote:
> I am working on automating molecular biology, making all-purpose robots (https://cartesianrobotics.xyz/).
> I need eventually to test them with the real experiments, this is why I need a lab. I also need to
> compare the robots with a live person for efficiency, speed, and accuracy. I am working now on
> affordable automation of the DNA cleanup with the magnetic beads.

Hmmm.... How about moving to Albuquerque and we can collaborate? I rent a warehouse office space of 800 square feet, (74
meters**2), for $650/month here. NM has "sale" tax on all incomes except stock trades though. Any odd jobs services selling
gets taxed 8% off the top, then there's income tax patterned after the IRS taxes. The real estate taxes are much less here
though, and some houses can be had for under $200k. Also needed here are security measures -- it's the land of breaking bad after
all. No glassware laws, hardly any traffic speeding policing -- probably do what you want in a house if not bothering neighbors.
Alaska and NM are the last frontiers in the US.

[Sergii Pochekailov]

Thanks a lot for all the comments and suggestions!

It seems that I will need to rent a commercial place anyway to purchase from any supplier. Then, there is probably no reason to do a lab at a residential property; if I rent the commercial property, I will build my lab there.

I only really hope I can make it work financially.