Commercial Flatwork in Denver, CO

Large pours where the jointing has to be right

Commercial flatwork in Denver covers the large horizontal surfaces on a site: parking areas, drive aisles, loading aprons, walkways and pads. The concrete is not exotic. The difficulty is that these are big pours with real load, real traffic and a jointing plan that has to be right the first time.

On a large slab, random cracking is not a cosmetic problem. It is a maintenance liability that gets worse every winter as water and salt find their way in.

Commercial flatwork in Denver: thickness follows the vehicle

A car park and a delivery apron look similar and are not the same slab. Loaded trucks, refuse vehicles and delivery traffic concentrate far more weight, and they concentrate it repeatedly in the same wheel paths.

Thickness, reinforcement and base depth all get specified from the heaviest regular vehicle, including refuse collection, which is frequently the heaviest thing that visits a commercial site and frequently the one nobody mentions.

The joint layout is a drawing

Large pours need a planned grid of control joints keeping panels close to square, with construction joints where pours meet and isolation joints where the slab meets buildings, columns and existing structures.

Joint spacing follows slab thickness, and the cuts have to be made in the window after the concrete is firm enough to saw and before it has cracked on its own. On a large placement that window drives the crew size and the sequence.

Accessible parking and routes

Accessible parking spaces and their access aisles have defined slope limits in all directions, and the route from the space to the entrance is an accessible route with its own requirements.

These tolerances are tight and they are checked. On a resurfacing project it is common to find that the existing layout no longer complies, which is better to establish during pricing than at inspection.

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