Puddles After Every Storm? Parking Lot Drainage Problems

It rained for twenty minutes this afternoon. The sun came back out, but there's still a puddle by the entrance, and it'll probably be there tomorrow. Tenants walk around it, cars splash through it, and sooner or later someone asks you about it. If that sounds familiar, you're dealing with one of the most common parking lot drainage problems in Florida.

A puddle that won't go away isn't a cosmetic problem.

Why the water stays

Water needs somewhere to go. In a lot that's built right, the pavement slopes gently toward a drain, and the drain carries the water away. When a puddle hangs around, one of those two things has stopped working. Either part of the pavement has settled into a low spot, or the drain can't keep up.

Florida makes it worse.

Our summer storms dump a lot of rain fast, and the ground is often already soaked, so nothing drains into the soil. A lot that looked fine in February can start holding water by July. Delivery trucks and the same cars parked in the same spots every day also press the asphalt down over the years, and that's how a shallow dip is born.

Common parking lot drainage problems

Most of what we find falls into one of these:

• A low spot where the pavement has settled, often near entrances or where trucks turn.

• A drain or catch basin clogged with leaves, sand and trash.

• A trench drain that has cracked or sunk and no longer lines up with the surface.

• A lot that was never graded quite right from the start.

Check the drain first.

The first two are the easy ones, and a good cleaning can fix a clogged drain in an afternoon. The last two take real work, and they don't fix themselves. In our experience, waiting only makes them more expensive.

A job we did in Orlando

We worked on a Chick-fil-A in Orlando where drainage was the main job. We pulled out the existing trench drains and replaced them, so water would go where it should instead of flooding the area. We also rebuilt the concrete curbing and the pedestrian sidewalks around them.

A busy site like that can't have water sitting at the door. See the Orlando drainage project.

Don't patch a dip until you've checked the drain.

A new drain won't help a lot that sags, and patching a dip won't help if the drain is blocked. The fix has to match the cause. If you want the slope side of this, we wrote about it in our post on parking lot grading.

When to call someone

Start with the easy checks. After the next rain, take a few photos of where the water sits and look at the nearest drain. If it's full of debris, have your maintenance crew clear it. If the puddle comes back after that, the lot itself is the problem.

Pay attention to how long the water stays. A puddle that's gone in an hour is annoying. One that's still there the next day is working its way into the base under the pavement, and that's where cracks and potholes start. Once you see cracking around a wet spot, it's time to get someone out.

Not sure which problem you have? Send us a few photos and the address. We'll tell you what we see. You can reach All Paving at 1-888-439-ROAD or request a quote on our site.