A garage is a place where heavy equipment is repaired and placed with a sudden and continuous load on the floor. There may be a load of bikes, mother car, rickshaw, etc.
The floor of the garage may be of different materials like concrete, stone, hard soil, etc. The floor should be hard enough to bear a load of different materials without compaction.
It is best to construct the floor with concrete due to following reasons.
- Materials can be found easily.
- It can be easily placed and poured onto the floor.
- It can be molded in any shape and size easily.
Now, if we construct the floor slab with the help of concrete then one question arises in our mind, How thick should concrete be for a garage?
As per the experience and recommendation of different structural engineers, the minimum thickness of the slab should be 4 inches or 101.6 mm. But if the slab has to bear more load on it, then the thickness should be increased up to 8 inches or 203.2 mm.
In the case of the garage, the floor slab has to bear the heavy load with a sudden and continuous load so, the thickness of the concrete slab should be more than 5 inches or 127 mm. In most cases the thickness of the garage floor slab is kept at 6 inches ie. 152.4 mm.
Should we provide rebar in the garage floor slab?
Concrete is strong to bear compressive force and weak to bear tensile force. In the garage, the floor has to bear compressive force and less amount of tensile force. But the such an amount of tensile stress is bearable by a concrete slab.
So there is no point in providing rebar on the garage floor. But, keep in mind if some portion of the soil below the slab is weak or not well compacted, then the concrete slab may crack in that area.
Hence, to prevent from such types of failure of floor it is better to provide rebar i.e steel rod in the slab. The clear cover of the slab should be a minimum of 25 mm and the spacing between rebar can be placed at 100 mm to 120 mm apart.
I hope this article on the “thickness of concrete slab in the garage” remains helpful for you.
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