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The gross weight of the heaviest single item that will be moved across this floor.
Weigh the item as it will actually travel — a rack loaded for shipping, a UPS with its batteries in, a crate with its pallet. The empty weight on the data sheet is not the weight that crosses the floor.
How many wheels the item rolls on when it is travelling in a straight line.
Count the wheels actually in contact. A pallet truck has two load rollers and a steer wheel; a rack on four castors has four, until it is tipped to get over a threshold.
How few wheels carry the item at the worst moment of a turn or a threshold crossing.
This is where raised floors get damaged. Pivoting a four-castor rack round a corner puts most of its weight on two wheels, and lifting one corner over a ramp lip can put it on one. Two is the usual honest answer; one is the answer if the item gets tipped.
The panel's published rolling load for a small number of passes, from its test certificate.
In the CISCA procedure this is the ten-pass figure — what the panel survives on a one-off delivery route without permanent set beyond the allowed limit. It is always the larger of the two ratings.
The panel's published rolling load for repeated traffic, from the same certificate.
The ten-thousand-pass figure, and the one that governs any aisle a trolley uses regularly. It is markedly lower than the low-pass rating because the failure mode is accumulated damage rather than a single overload.
Whether this route sees a single delivery or repeated trolley traffic.
Choose by the route, not by the item. The same rack crossing the same floor once during fit-out and every week thereafter is two different checks, and the second one is against a much lower rating.
Governing wheel load
550 lb
The governing wheel load is under the panel rating shown with it. Being under the rating on this one comparison is not clearance to move the load: the understructure, the panel condition and the route are all outside it.
- Wheel load with the load shared evenly
- 275 lb
- Wheel load on a pivot turn
- 550 lb
- Panel rating applied
- 705 lb
- Spare capacity against that rating
- 155 lb
- Utilisation of the panel rating
- 78.01 %
They open the calculator with your figures already in it
Raised Access Floor Rolling Load Check Calculator: 550 lb — shown in imperial, US market. The link sets both, so the result they see is the one on your screen.
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How this was calculated
Formula source(s)
- CISCA Recommended Test Procedures for Access Floors — rolling load is rated by passing a defined wheel over the panel a set number of times, at both a low pass count and a high one, and a panel carries a different rating for each
- BS EN 12825, Raised access floors — the European counterpart, which classifies panels by load capacity and states the rolling load separately from the concentrated and uniformly distributed cases
- The governing wheel load is the delivered weight divided by the number of wheels genuinely sharing it. On a pivot turn that is fewer wheels than the equipment has, which is the case this check exists for
Inputs used
- Delivered Equipment Weight
- 1100 lb
- Number of Wheels or Castors
- 4
- Wheels Sharing the Load on a Pivot Turn
- 2
- Panel Rolling Load Rating, Low Pass Count
- 990 lb
- Panel Rolling Load Rating, High Pass Count
- 705 lb
- Traffic on This Route
- Repeated traffic route (high pass count)
Intermediate steps
- Wheel load with the load shared evenly
- 275 lb
- Wheel load on a pivot turn
- 550 lb
- Panel rating applied
- 705 lb
- Spare capacity against that rating
- 155 lb
- Utilisation of the panel rating
- 78.01 %
Confidence note: The governing wheel load is under the panel rating shown with it. Being under the rating on this one comparison is not clearance to move the load: the understructure, the panel condition and the route are all outside it.
What this calculation does not cover
- Checks the panel, not the understructure. A pedestal that has lost its adhesive bond or a stringer left out during a cable pull will fail long before the panel does.
- Wheel diameter and tyre hardness change the answer and are not inputs here. A small hard castor concentrates its load into a far smaller contact patch than the test wheel the rating was measured with.
- Cut panels at borders and panels with cutouts carry less than a full panel. Neither is covered by the published rating.
Computed in your browser — nothing you enter is uploaded. Presented in US customary units and US trade terminology. Where a formula follows a published standard, that standard and its edition are cited beside it on this page; where none governs, the page says so. Local amendments override model codes — verify against the code in force where you build.
Sources checked 2026-09-06 · in the site-wide review of 2026-09-06 · v1.0.1
Regulatory standards & verification citations3
- CISCA Recommended Test Procedures for Access Floors — rolling load is rated by passing a defined wheel over the panel a set number of times, at both a low pass count and a high one, and a panel carries a different rating for each
- BS EN 12825, Raised access floors — the European counterpart, which classifies panels by load capacity and states the rolling load separately from the concentrated and uniformly distributed cases
- The governing wheel load is the delivered weight divided by the number of wheels genuinely sharing it. On a pivot turn that is fewer wheels than the equipment has, which is the case this check exists for
Which documents these citations point at
Standards referenced: BS EN 12825 (European Committee for Standardization, as published in the UK by BSI, European (EN)).
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