Concrete parking lot building in Fargo ND - pavement sized for what parks on it

Most calls start one of two ways. Either an old lot is breaking up and holding water, or there's a gravel or dirt area that needs real pavement. The price mostly comes down to the size of the lot, how thick it has to be for what parks on it, how much ground needs digging out and replacing, and whether an old lot has to come out first. The schedule turns on the weather and, on larger sites, on the engineering and city paperwork. I walk the site with you and put the scope in writing, and that's where your own figure comes from.

We start by sizing the pavement to what'll actually park on it, because a lot for cars and a lot that takes delivery trucks aren't built the same. Our crew digs out and checks the subgrade, the soil the pavement sits on, and replaces soft or uneven patches with material like the rest, so the slab sits on the same ground all the way across. We set the grade so water runs off the lot and away from the building. Before the pour I confirm the mix is air-entrained, made with tiny bubbles that give freezing water room to expand, because a lot here freezes and thaws all winter. After the pour we lay a broom finish, a light scratched texture that gives tires and shoes grip, and cut control joints, straight grooves that tell the concrete where to crack. Then it cures, the slow hardening it needs before traffic. If the budget gets tight, I'll cut from the finish before the base. Nobody sees the base on day one, but it decides whether the lot is still flat years from now.

Most lots come with other work around them. Light poles, sign posts and small structures sit on concrete footings, and we set those before the pavement goes in around them. If the building the lot serves has settled at a corner, foundation raising brings it back up, and that's best done before we pave tight to the walls.

In Fargo, the size of the site decides a lot of the paperwork. Under the city's stormwater policy, developing or redeveloping a site of one acre or more, or one that's part of a larger development of that size, needs a stormwater management plan prepared by a Professional Engineer registered in North Dakota. The policy also calls for water quality treatment on those sites and on existing parking lots as it lays out. That plan shapes where the water goes, and so where the lot can sit. That's why on bigger sites we bring the engineer and the paperwork in early, so the layout isn't held up. On every job we check with the city what it needs, and when a permit's required, we handle the application and set up the inspections with you.

We're based in Fargo and work across the cities around it. On older lots, what we see most is standing water in low spots, and the concrete around those spots breaks up first after a few winters. So we check where the water runs before we price anything, and we see the same thing on lots in West Fargo and Moorhead.