Parking Garage Snow Removal

[Archie264]

Maybe this isn't a structural question per se, but it becomes one when it's done wrong. Anyway, I was wondering what the options are for snow removal in a pretensioned parking garage. Salt corrodes and piling up mounds of snow can break double-T joists. What are other options? Any of you bridge guys have any creative solutions? Thanks.

 

[JStephen]

Somewhere on Youtube is a video of a snowplow falling through the slab on a parking garage.

 

[dcarr82775]

I know of many garages have 'gates' in the outside wall where the snow gets dumped onto the ground adjacent to the garage. I know of many that just get piles of snow as well. We were bored one day a couple years back and measured the average weight of a pile of snow on the garage across the street to be about 200 psf. Not of sign of distress.

 

[KootK]

1) Heat the floor and melt the snow (never seen this done for a whole deck).
2) If there's only one elevated deck, push the snow down the ramp leading up to it.
3) Pile the snow up in some designated area and leave it. This costs some stalls.
4) Construct one of those snow chutes that dcarr mentioned.

That's all that I know of. I visited a parkade with a combination of concepts 3 $ 4 last week. A photo is attached.

The greatest trick that bond stress ever pulled was convincing the world it didn't exist.

 

[KootK]

And here's an exterior view.

The greatest trick that bond stress ever pulled was convincing the world it didn't exist.