ADA Ramp Surveys in Napa, CA

Napa’s accessibility exposure runs through its hospitality economy. Tasting rooms, hotels, restaurants, and event spaces publish accessible-route claims to a national and international audience, and the route being described usually crosses a parking area, a courtyard, and a threshold into a building that was not built for the purpose. Downtown, older brick and masonry buildings along First and Main have entries raised above a walk that has been repaired repeatedly, and adaptive reuse projects keep adding new ramps and landings to existing sidewalk grades. The city’s own street standards adopt Caltrans Standard Plan A88A for curb ramp details, so right-of-way ramps in Napa are built and reviewed against a known drawing, which makes verification a matter of comparing measured geometry to a published standard rather than to opinion.

The limits are the same as everywhere and just as unforgiving: 8.33 percent maximum ramp run, 2.083 percent cross slope under the 2010 ADA Standards and 2 percent under California Building Code Chapter 11B, 1:48 in all directions across accessible stalls and access aisles, 60-inch minimum landings, and 1:10 curb ramp flares. Hospitality sites fail most often in the parking field and the courtyard, where decorative paving, pavers, and gravel transitions were designed for appearance and drainage. We scan the whole route from the accessible stall to the door, so slope, cross slope, and every change in level along the way come from one measured surface instead of a series of unrelated readings.

Deliverables include slope and cross-slope exhibits with spot elevations, stall and aisle tables, threshold and change-in-level callouts, ramp tables against A88A and A88B, and a DWG base map for the architect or civil engineer. We document conditions and do not certify compliance; that is the CASp or architect’s role. See ADA compliance surveys and 3D scanning in Napa.