Covered car parks - Design

A parking lot is a place where motor vehicles and their trailers can be stored off the public highway, to the exclusion of any other activity.

It can be found :

• in a building, superstructure or infrastructure;

• on an area with or without parking facilities, on a building terrace or under a building.

The purpose of this article is to set out the general design rules and geometric provisions for parking lots accessible to the public:

• for vehicles weighing less than 3.5 t and less than 1.90 m high ;

• with non-automatic storage.

It covers the following topics:

• LOCATIONS ;

• clear height ;

• traffic lanes and ramps ;

• slope of floors and ramps ;

• the stability and durability of the structures.

A large part is reserved for fire safety regulations, which are based on the fundamental principle of ensuring the rapid and safe evacuation of all occupants.

To ensure the best possible protection of people in the event of a fire in a building, prevention relies in particular on :

• limiting the risk of fire ;

• limiting its spread;

• evacuation facilities;

• easy access for emergency services.

Preventive measures form the basis of regulatory texts and can be grouped according to the following main themes:

• layout to facilitate emergency access;

• Isolation from third parties and, in particular, "special risk" third parties;

• fire resistance of structures, which must at least withstand evacuation and rescue operations;

• Clearances, which must facilitate the evacuation of people through their layout, size and marking;

• Compartmentalization and partitioning, which can limit the spread of the fire;

• flammability of interior fittings and building components;

• Smoke extraction, to facilitate occupant evacuation and emergency response;

• technical installations, which, if properly designed, should not become a source or cause of further damage;

• alarm and fire-fighting...