ADA Question

[raydefan]

I am a civil engineer from California working on a museum site. The architect designed an open area of texured concrete that will flow down into an exhibit. The grade being about 4%. It is my understanding that in open areas like this, you must design the site with grades no greater that 2% in any direction. I told him that in order to go to 4%, you must stripe out (with typical blue cross stripe) a path that the disabled should use. He asked me if the path of travel needed to be striped, or if it could simply be a different type of concrete that clearly distiguished this as a path. I wasn't sure. Do any of you know?

Thanks,

Jeff

 

[ACtrafficengr]

You're right about needing an accessible route. Check access board for ADA Access Board regs. The Access Board also provides technical advice.



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"Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters, and the Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare.

Blair Houghton

 

[canman]

Jeff,

I too am an engineer in California that does a lot of work with the California State Architect's office which is very big on A.D.A. issues. I recently did the grading on a school site that had a sloped textured concrete open area. The architect will need to define on his site plan the areas where path of travel will not exceed 2% cross slope and 5% longitudinal slope. This will not need to be done with any type of striping but as you suggest can be done with different type of concrete materials. Your open area can have 4% in areas not defined as path of travel on his site plan, which will need to be approved a local jurisdiction such as a building department. Most building departments that I know of aren't up with a lot of current A.D.A. guidelines though, they will just want to make sure your defined path of travel is less then the requirements I just stated. Key word here is "defined", the different types of materials will provide a disabled person an idea what path of travel to follow.

Canman

 

[raydefan]

Canman,

Thanks for your reply. Is there any documents that state you can do such a thing. I've been looking through a California ADA manual and can't find anything. Also, how did you come up the 4% max slope in areas not defined as a path of travel? What this defined anywhere?

Thanks,

Jeff

 

[canman]

Jeff,

I am not aware of any documents that state this, although I will ask some architects if they know of any. I didn't mean to confuse you with the 4%, I pulled that from your earlier post. Path of travel has the following slope requirements. At all times no more than 2% maximum cross slope is allowed. For longitudinal grades maximum slope, not considered a ramp is 5%. Anything higher is considered a ramp which can not exceed 8.33%.

canman

 

[canman]

Jeff,

I got this information from an architect I work with regarding your situation:

"the path of travel needs to be indicated by some sort of marking - like painted and possibly the change in concrete -and there would have to be signage indicating the path. Title 24 Section 1100 has the access criteria".

I haven't checked out this section but here is the link if you have a lot of time to kill.

http://www.bsc.ca.gov/title_24/documents/Part1/2001_part1.pdf

best of luck!