Thornton RV and Trailer Pad Contractors

Second week of November. The rig came home from its last trip in October, the water's blown out, the covers are on, and nothing moves until spring. Everybody calls that the off season. For the concrete underneath, it's the hard part of the year.

Six months of the same axles on the same square feet. Snow sliding off a long roof onto one strip of slab. Meltwater running under the rig at noon and freezing there at nine. Jack feet planted through every cycle. A pad that shrugs off summer can still lose the winter, and we see the results every spring in North Creek Farms and Quail Valley alike.

What winter actually does to a parked rig's slab

Start with the weight, because it doesn't move. A trailer or motorhome puts thousands of pounds through four tires and a jack foot, and unlike a car it stays put for months. The concrete handles that fine. The ground underneath creeps, and clay taking on meltwater all winter creeps faster. That's how a pad ends up dished under the tandems by April.

Then the water. An RV roof sheds a remarkable amount of snow, and all of it lands in the same two lines along the sides of the rig. On a flat pad it pools there, soaks the base at the edges, and freezes. Thirty or forty times a season at this elevation. Entrained air survives that. Nothing else does, which is why old pads look fine down the middle and chewed up along both sides.

And the rig keeps the sun off. A slab that gets no direct light in December stays frozen longer and works harder than the driveway twenty feet away.

Grading a pad for the six months it sits still

Most pads get graded for rain. We grade for melt. Rain arrives at once and leaves fast. Snowmelt is slow, it happens under the rig where nobody sees it, and it runs during the hours the surface is coldest. So fall goes one clear direction, away from the house and the fence line, and no low spot lands anywhere a jack foot might.

Where the pad meets the driveway there's a seam that takes the rig's full weight twice a trip. We thicken it and dowel the two slabs so they move as one piece instead of stepping apart over a few winters. Where the pad meets dirt, a compacted shoulder holds the edge up, because a tire parked beside an unsupported edge is a chunk waiting to break off.

One more call to make before we form: conduit. Power for a battery tender and a hose bib for spring cleaning cost almost nothing while the ground is open.

What you set between the rig and the slab for the winter

When to build one, and how the winter calendar works

The smart play is booking the pour for a stretch when the rig is gone. Late spring through early fall is prime pouring weather anyway, and concrete that goes down during a trip means you never have to find somewhere else to park. Finish at least a month before the rig comes back, because twenty-eight days at design strength isn't a suggestion when tandem axles and a tongue jack are going on it.

We pour pads in cold weather too. Heated mix water, a chloride-free accelerator, blankets over the whole slab, scheduled between fronts. A big pad sheds heat across a lot of area and is harder to protect than a walkway, so we'll say plainly at the estimate whether April serves you better. Frozen subgrade means we don't place.

First winter, keep every kind of ice melt off, sand the walking lane instead, and hold the rig off until the twenty-eight days are done.

You can see the winter park spot from the alley in March. Two dull rectangles where the tires sat, four little rings where the jack feet were, and if the pad was poured thin, four shallow dishes to go with them.From the crew lead on these jobs