Commercial Car Park Project

The storm test

Rain hammering down on a Tuesday afternoon. Trolleys still rolling across the bays. A delivery van idles by the loading dock, wipers going, waiting for a gap to reverse in. Nobody's slipping. Nothing's pooling around the tyres. That's the car park doing exactly what it was built to do.

Three jobs, one surface

This commercial permeable concrete car park never gets a quiet stretch. Cars come and go from opening to close. Staff and customers cross the same ground on foot, weaving between bumpers. Delivery vehicles still need a clear run in and a clear run out, whatever else is happening on site. Most car parks are drawn for cars alone. This one had to work for three kinds of user at once, and the client wanted it to look sharp doing it.

Layout first, surface second

We set the traffic out before we thought about the wearing surface at all: where vehicles turn, and where trucks need room to swing wide. People get their crossing points fitted in around that. Only once that's settled does the surface get designed, for the steady turning and braking of a busy commercial lot rather than a suburban driveway. It's the same order on every job we take at a commercial site. Thickness is the honest limit here. A standard bay runs on 125 mm; the loading apron, taking heavier turns more often, goes thicker again. The client doesn't get to pick the number, the traffic does.

Where the rain goes

The old plan for this site was kerbs and pipes to a pit, and drains further down the line that were already struggling. Instead, each shower sinks straight through the bays into the stone bed below. The low corner that used to pond after a storm now drains with everywhere else. A clean, even surface with no ponding patches does more for a property's frontage than most owners expect, and it's less work to keep than a surface leaning on grates to cope.

Site by site

No two car parks carry the same traffic. Ours start with a visit to the site, not a template pulled off a shelf. That's as true for one loading bay as it is for a full commercial permeable concrete car park. Our car parks page shows how we plan the next one.