REPAIRING CONCRETE CAR PARKS - A CASE STUDY FROM THE CLIENT'S PERSPECTIVE

Car parking structures in the UK are suffering from premature deterioration as a result of ingress of de-icing salts into unprotected concrete slabs. Design Codes in the UK do not address this problem properly and fail to give adequate guidance to designers to prevent salt ingress. As a result, repairs are having to be carried out much earlier than should be the case, typically at 20-25 years, for many structures. This paper looks at two case histories, involving repairs to two car parks in the South East of England, detailing the problems encountered, the solutions chosen to deal with them and summarises the project and the repairs from the client's viewpoint. For the covering abstract see ITRD E123168.