In my plans there is a Tornado Shelter located in the floor of the drive-though bay of the Lone Beech Garage.
I have some grating that I intend to use to protect foot traffic from falling into the shelter under normal use of that area.
A concern was that an inspector might have issues with the grating and that needed to be resolved prior to the shelter being constructed.
Yesterday there was to be a meeting at my home to demonstrate that the grating would support a car wheel. After positioning a car in one of my house garage bays, I used a floor jack to lift the nose of the car. I located two jack stands under the front jack points and I built a mock-up of the shelter using some concrete solids. I spaced the concrete solids the width of the shelter and set one grate on top of them.
I'm giving a condensed version of the mock-up construction. The procedure was a bit like a game of Tetris ...jacking, moving solids, placing stands, moving jack, moving solids...
I set the front left tire down on the grate - it supported the car fine. I then used the car's scissor jack to lift the tire off the grate until I needed to lower it demonstrate the grate's strength.
The end result was as shown in the attached images.
I had shown this setup to my builder prior to the anticipated demonstration with the inspector.
I got a call from my builder around 1:00 PM on Friday (yesterday) that indicated the inspector and builder's schedules weren't going to mesh that afternoon. However, the builder told me he had had a long telephone conversation with the inspector about the grating. The builder had described my mock-up and how the grating had carried the load. The builder told me that, after the builder had described what I had done with the mock-up, the inspector had said that he was OK with the grating. Also onsider if you are ever going to drive a forklift in there. Those are extremely heavy even unloaded
I would prefer to have been a part of the conversation but it sounds like my grating has been blessed.
Scott