Tilt-Wall Construction in Pflugerville, Texas

Pflugerville's Unified Development Code counts tilt-wall concrete panels as masonry. How much of a wall they may cover depends on the building's use and zone.

• LI and GI: panels up to 75%
• CI: panels up to 85%
• Office, retail, commercial: up to 60%

Light and General Industrial

Concrete panels are a secondary material capped at 75% of the walls. Tilt-wall, poured-in-place and precast panels must have integral color, be textured or patterned, include primary masonry, and show reveals, punch-outs or similar relief on at least 25 percent of each primary facade. A metal building needs at least 25% primary masonry on its primary facades, and a wall facing a major collector or arterial, or visible from a residential district, must be 100% masonry, a quarter of it primary.

Campus Industrial, offices and retail

In the CI zone every facade must be masonry apart from the allowed secondary and accent materials; panels may reach 85%, tilt-wall buildings must carry masonry on all exterior walls, and relief is required on at least 25 percent of each primary facade. Office, retail and commercial buildings may use concrete panels for up to 60% of their walls, with reveals, patterns or textures on at least 10 percent of each facade.

One caution. The City says certain of its industrial design provisions have been superseded by state law (H.B. 2439, 2019) and are being revised, without listing which; the rest remain in force. The Texas-registered design professional on the project confirms the current rules before panels are detailed.

The City describes Pflugerville as lying on the eastern edge of the blackland prairies, and Texas Parks and Wildlife describes Blackland Prairie soils as typically dark alkaline clays known as black gumbo. For street pavement, the City's engineering manual requires a soil report that measures potential vertical rise, how far expansive clay can heave; above 2 inches, the report must lay out subgrade treatments to reduce it. The same manual calls for lime-stabilized subgrade at least 8 inches thick, unless sulfates in the soil rule lime out, reaching 150 psi with less than 1% swell.

Curing the casting slab

Tilt-up panels are cast on a concrete slab-on-ground while they lie flat, so that slab has to be right before the first panel is formed. NRMCA puts the loss at as much as 50 percent of potential strength when concrete is left to dry out instead of being moist-cured. For hot weather it says no added water once a batch is over 1½ hours old, and curing for 3 days at minimum.

Floors for tall racks and robots

Inside the walls, flatness numbers decide how the floor performs. An engineering course on warehouse slabs pairs lift trucks with no racking with FF 25 and FL 17, racks near 20 feet tall with 35/25, and racking of 35 feet or more, or automated systems, with 50/35. Floor levelness can also cap how high pallets may safely be stacked.

Sidewalks and approaches in the right-of-way

Sidewalks must be built with new construction on any commercial lot, at least 6 feet wide on commercial lots and along arterials, major collectors and industrial streets. Flatwork in the street right-of-way is bedded on at least two inches of clean washed sand, with expansion joints at the property line of concrete driveways and wherever new concrete meets old; where a sidewalk is jointed, the joints take #3 rebar dowels 12 inches long, spaced a minimum of 24 inches on center. A standard local right-of-way application costs $400.00.