ADA Ramp Surveys in Brentwood, CA

Brentwood has two accessibility conversations running at once. Downtown, around the older commercial blocks and the civic core, the sidewalks and corners were built to earlier standards and have been repaired piecemeal, so curb ramp slopes, landing lengths, and the cross slope of the walk in front of a shop door are the things nobody actually knows until somebody measures them. Out in the subdivisions still being built east and south of the core, the question is the opposite: the site was designed to California Building Code Chapter 11B, and what matters is whether the concrete came out of the forms matching the plan. The city’s pavement management work bundles ADA curb ramp rehabilitation with pavement and sidewalk rehabilitation, which is the pattern federal law expects, because resurfacing a street counts as an alteration and pulls the curb ramps at the affected intersections along with it.

Either way, the tolerances are unforgiving. A ramp run may not exceed 8.33 percent, cross slope is capped at 2.083 percent under the 2010 ADA Standards and 2 percent under Chapter 11B, accessible stalls and aisles must stay within 1:48 in all directions, and landings need 60 inches of length. Those limits are tight enough that a single smart-level reading proves very little on a poured surface. We capture the ramp, landing, gutter, and route as a point cloud or a dense total-station surface, then compute slope and cross slope across the whole width. On new construction that means we can check forms and screed grades before the pour, which is far cheaper than sawcutting a finished walk.

You get slope and cross-slope exhibits with spot elevations, tables by ramp or stall, and a DWG base map the civil engineer can correct against. Documentation only: the compliance determination belongs to your CASp or architect. See ADA compliance surveys and as-built surveys in Brentwood.