Concrete parking lot building in Ventura CA - built to carry your cars and trucks

Most owners who call me have an old lot that's cracking, sinking in spots or holding water after rain, or bare ground next to a building that needs parking. The price moves with the lot's size, the heaviest vehicles it has to carry, how much digging or fill the site needs and whether old paving has to be cut out first. The schedule mostly turns on whether the site needs a grading permit and on the weather. You'll get your own figure at the estimate, once I've walked the site with you. We're based in Ventura and work across the cities around it.

First I ask what drives on the lot, from your customers' cars to the delivery trucks, because that decides where the slab has to be heaviest. We lay the lot out so heavy traffic stays in its own lanes and out of the car stalls, and the national concrete design guide says keeping trucks out of the car areas makes for a more economical lot. Then we dig out to firm ground and pack the subgrade, the soil the slab sits on, because a base that's only raked level settles with the dirt and takes the concrete down with it. We check where the water will run so nothing falls toward the building, then set the forms and the rebar, the steel that holds the slab together if it cracks. We pour in the cooler part of the day so the top doesn't come out weak and dusty. A broom finish gives tires and shoes some grip, and we cut control joints, the grooves that give cracks a place to go, lined up so they guide the striping later. Then the slab cures, which means it sits and gains strength before anyone parks on it. If the budget gets tight, I'd rather spend it on the base than on the finish, because nobody sees the base on day one but it decides whether your lot stays flat.

Some lots come with other concrete work attached. Light poles, a carport or a wall along the edge usually need concrete footings poured first. If the building beside an old lot has settled, foundation raising can bring it back up before we set the new grade against it.

If your lot involves digging out or bringing in fill, the City of Ventura requires a grading plan and permit, and those come from the city's Public Works Engineering, Land Development office. Lots in the city's hillside areas have extra grading requirements on top of that. Whether your site needs the permit gets settled at the permit stage, and when it does, we work out the right office for your address and handle the paperwork with them. While we work, the city requires controls on any job that disturbs the ground to keep erosion, loose dirt and waste from leaving the site, so we set those up before the digging starts. After the job, the city wants new paving to control the runoff and pollutants coming off hard surfaces, and to soak in, store or reuse that water whenever possible. That's where options like pervious concrete get weighed in the project design.

Most lots we're asked to build here serve a shop, an office or an apartment building, with cars coming and going all day and a trash truck or delivery van turning in the same few spots. Those turning spots are usually where an old lot fails first, so that's where the heavier concrete goes, and we see the same pattern on jobs in Oxnard and Camarillo.