I am having an apartment building gutted because of fire, the contractor wants to park a dump truck on my lawn and sidewalk which is a few years old. The truck is medium size dual rear wheels with about
16-20 ft bed 5 ft high, I guess maybe 10 ton loaded but I dont know. What do I need to have them put under the wheels to protect my concrete and lawn, can I really protect the concrete from cracking. I thought using 1" plywood cut in half so I would have 2" thick 4 foot wide sheets under each wheel. Or must I have them park in the street.
Sadly plywood does not distribute the load very much. It's crap shoot as to your sidewalk if you park something heavy on it. Depends on how firm the ground is under it. Crossing the sidewalk is less risky than leaving it sitting on it. Can't they get on the other side of it?
I'm not sure how to arrange this contract-wise, but contractor should be held liable for damages if they occur.
Last year, I had some trees removed from a hilly area and contractor brought in a mat to lay over the lawn in parts he had to bring a log hauling tractor and lawn was left undamaged. It should be up to your contractor to do something similar.
Don't know about loads and such, but around here contractors for city road projects lay a honkin' big sheet of steel across holes in the street. I mean it's like 1/2" thick. That would probably distribute the load quite well.
Because busy fighting a bush fire, we did not bother about this when the water truck (est. 10 tons) parked right over the septic tank tile bed. The tile bed worked OK for the next dozen years we lived there, but the dip in the lawn lasted all that time as well.
A pick-up truck would be fine on the sidewalk even fully loaded, but a 33,000 lb + commercial vehicle might crack the sidewalk even with plywood down...
The question you have to ask yourself is how have people moved in to your apartment building in the past ? Have moving trucks the same size as the contractor's dump truck been parked in the area before ?
There is *nothing* you can do to save your lawn area, it will have to be repaired after the work is done, either from parking on it to do the work required to rehab your building or from the people walking on it to do the work/staging materials there during the work... Such is just a casualty of the construction zone...
As for parking in the street, all that will do is add more time to job at hand and potentially require some form of permit to block off an area in the street to make loading the debris into the truck safer and less of a risk to the public walking/driving by on the street...
Better to contain any debris or spills or 'oops i missed the truck' moments on your land where you and your contractor can deal with them and properly load the trucks for transit without being blamed for any debris on the street or creating a hazardous condition in the road if old nails or glass make it onto the road near where you were loading...
Your job site could get shut down and you would be billed for the expense of the street cleaning if the AHJ wanted to make an issue out of something...
Those steel plates used in roadway work are 1" thick or better and are only allowed to be used where the span of the hole it is covering is less than half the width of the plate and the plate is centered over the hole...
You need a serious size front end loader to move those things around safely...
In this particular situation such a plate is not recommended because they would represent a slipping hazard for foot traffic when wet and this sort of project work will go months where the truck the OP is worried about is being used as the dumpster for the contractor...
Months to gut an apartment building? The OP is worried about a couple of squares of sidewalk - I don't think the job is anywhere near the size you're imagining. I'm guessing maybe six units and a week to gut it. Who's holding the pool money? ;)
Not if the contractor is using the dump truck as a dumpster...
You can not store any sort of debris inside a partially occupied building with dwelling units, it represents a fire hazard...
The contractor will be making MANY daily trips to empty the truck at the waste dumping/recycling center during the demolition phase of the project and at least once a day thereafter to have a clean truck to fill with the next day's trash...
It is a great way to avoid creating an attractive nuisance on your property which could create liability if someone decides to trespass in a dumpster looking for "treasure" and got hurt -- it also totally eliminates the issue of "anonymous donations" of trash which cost the contractor/property owner more money to dispose of...
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