Larkspur RV Pad Contractors

An RV pad is a piece of equipment more than it's a piece of concrete. You back onto it in the dark with a spotter waving, drop the jacks, level the rig, run a cord and a hose, throw the chocks under, and then it sits. Sometimes a weekend. Sometimes from October until the passes open. Each of those moments asks something different of the slab, and the pads that disappoint people failed at the boring part.

Larkspur properties tend to have room for a rig, which is why so many folks out in Bear Dance and Sage Port store one at home instead of renting a spot in town. Room isn't the same as a good location. Slope, tree canopy, turning radius, and where the water goes in April all decide whether a pad works in practice or only looks right on a satellite photo.

Where the weight actually lands

Length, width, and the swing nobody measures

Start with the rig's actual length, not the model number. Add the tow vehicle if it stays hitched, or another twenty-two feet if you drop the trailer and back the truck in beside it. Then four feet at the tail so you can walk behind it without stepping into mud. Most people who tell us they need a thirty-foot pad want a fifty-foot pad once we run that math on the tape.

Width is where the savings tempt people, and it's the wrong place to save. Twelve feet is our floor. Once the awning is out, a chair is under it, and the entry steps are down, ten feet of concrete puts half your living space on dirt.

Then there's the swing. On a wooded lot with a curved approach, the rig sweeps a path much wider than the pad itself, and the tires cut a corner across whatever sits there. We stake the actual turn before forming anything. Sometimes that means widening the apron. Sometimes it means shifting the pad ten feet and saving a tree. Better to find out with stakes than with a mirror.

Pitch, water, and living with the pad in winter

Dead level sounds right and isn't. We build in a slight fall, about an eighth of an inch across each foot, which the rig's leveling system handles without complaint and which moves rainwater, snowmelt, and your wash bucket away instead of pooling under the tires. Which direction it falls gets decided on site, because on a Larkspur hillside the wrong one sends everything toward a foundation, a septic area, or the neighbor's low corner.

Winter is the real test. A rig parked from November to May keeps a shadow of snow under it for months, and the concrete in that shadow freezes and thaws over and over while the exposed part dries in the sun. That's why the mix is air-entrained and the base drains. Two habits worth keeping: nothing with chloride in it goes on the pad the first winter, and blocks stay under the jack feet year-round, since a steel foot parked in one wet spot all season will stain and eventually pit the surface.

Best time to build one? Late spring through early fall, and September is our favorite for pads. The rig is usually home for the season, the cure finishes before hard freezes, and the slab sits undisturbed all winter before it takes real weight in the spring.

What we build into an RV pad

• Approach and turn staked with the actual rig dimensions, before forms
• Topsoil and organics stripped, subgrade proof-rolled and soft pockets replaced
• Eight inches of road base compacted in lifts, watered as it goes
• Number four rebar on chairs, tightened under jack and landing gear positions
• Six-inch slab of air-entrained 4,000 PSI concrete
• Thickened, reinforced edges at the apron and anywhere a tire leaves the slab
• Conduit sleeve under the slab if shore power or a hose bib is coming later
• Control joints sawed the day of the pour
• Broom finish for traction wet, plus written cure and first-winter rules