Learning Center · Commercial
Commercial Concrete
Parking lots, industrial floors, ADA compliance, and maintenance planning for property managers.
Commercial concrete fails for different reasons than residential concrete, and it fails more expensively. It's rarely the mix. It's a slab designed around cars that ended up carrying delivery trucks, a dock apron with no thickened edge, or a lot that was never given anywhere for water to go.
These guides are written for the people who actually make these decisions: facility managers, property owners, HOA boards, and general contractors. They cover specification, phasing around live operations, ADA obligations that carry real liability, and how to build a multi-year concrete maintenance budget instead of reacting to failures.
Where compliance is involved, the guides say what the requirement is and where the liability sits.
Every guide in Commercial
Most readCommercial parking lots
Thickness by traffic type, why dock and dumpster areas fail first, and how to phase work around a live site.
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Most readADA requirements
The dimensions and tolerances that carry real liability — slope, cross-slope, width, changes in level, and detectable warnings.
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Why industrial floors fail
Joints, flatness, and surface hardness — the three things that decide whether a warehouse floor works, and why it's almost never the concrete.
Read the guideMaintenance planning
Moving from reactive repairs to a multi-year plan — condition assessment, intervention timing, and what to budget.
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Parking lot paving spec
What a commercial concrete paving specification should cover — traffic zones, thickness, base, strength, joints, drainage, accessibility, and quality control.
Read the guideCommercial Concrete: Parking Lots, Floors, ADA, and Maintenance
Commercial concrete is designed around traffic and liability. Parking lots are zoned: car stalls typically need 5 inches over a 6-inch base, drive aisles 6 inches, and truck routes, docks, and trash pads 8 inches or more, usually at 4,000–4,500 PSI. Industrial floors fail at the joints first, so joint design, flatness, and surface hardness matter more than the concrete itself.
Accessibility is a legal requirement. Accessible routes need at least 36 inches of clear width, a running slope no steeper than 1:20, a cross-slope no steeper than 1:48, and level changes under 1/4 inch. California's code adds requirements of its own. Trip hazards and non-compliant ramps are among the most common sources of liability on commercial properties.
These guides cover how commercial slabs are specified and phased, what ADA requires of sidewalks and parking, why warehouse floors fail, and how to plan maintenance budgets — typically 1–3% of concrete replacement value per year — so property owners spend on prevention rather than emergency repairs.
Commercial Concrete: Common Questions
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