Georgetown Elite Concrete works as a concrete contractor in Lago Vista, placing driveways, patios, slabs, parking areas and walks, and repairing, leveling and resurfacing concrete already down. Twenty years and more of concrete across this region sits behind that, and the people who measure the site are the ones who finish the surface. The question that decides most jobs here arrives before any concrete question does: how much of the lot is allowed to be covered at all. The zoning ordinance sets that in Section 5-50, Impervious Cover and Lot Coverage, and it is a limit on area rather than a charge on it, so exceeding it is not something you can pay your way past.
The range is unusually wide. Table A, the Table of Development Standards, sets the maximum at 5 percent in the R-1R district and 20 percent in R-1L, at 50 percent across R-1S, R-1M, R-1T, R-2 and R-4, at 60 percent in several other districts, and at 100 percent on the platted airport lots. Two lots the same size in different districts can differ by a factor of ten in what may be built on them.
Impervious Cover Here Is a Zoning Number
What Section 5-50 Actually Says
Section 5-50 provides that the impervious area covered by the principal and accessory structures, patios, parking areas and any other impervious cover of the ground shall not exceed the maximum percentage of total lot area shown in Table A. The number is a percentage of the whole lot rather than of a buildable area or a footprint. That framing matters because it makes every added surface cumulative against one budget. A house, a drive, a patio and a shed pad all draw on the same allowance, and the order they were built in does not change the arithmetic for whatever is proposed next.
It also means the calculation is a property-level exercise rather than a project-level one. We measure everything already covering the ground before working out what a new surface can be, because the allowance being spent is the whole lot’s and not the job’s.
A Limit, Not a Charge
Impervious cover is billed as a utility charge in some cities, which leads people to assume it is a cost to be weighed rather than a ceiling to be respected. Here it is a zoning maximum, so the consequence of exceeding it is that the work is not permissible rather than that it is more expensive. We are explicit about that at quoting because it changes the conversation. There is no version of a patio that is fifteen percent too large and simply costs more; there is a patio that fits the allowance and a patio that does not get approved.
That distinction also protects the client from a certain kind of bad advice. A contractor willing to pour first and treat the limit as a risk worth taking is handing the owner an unpermitted surface and the problem of explaining it at resale.
Why the Number Comes Before the Design
Designing first and checking coverage afterwards is the expensive order, particularly where the remaining allowance is small. On a lot in a low-coverage district the available area can be less than a single generous patio, so the constraint has to shape the design rather than trim it.
We work out the remaining allowance at the survey and design within it. That usually produces a better result anyway, because a surface sized deliberately to a limit tends to be laid out more carefully than one drawn freely and then cut back.
Where a client wants more than the allowance permits, saying so early is the only useful thing a contractor can do. Late is after drawings, deposits and expectations exist.
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Table A, From Five Percent to One Hundred
R-1R at Five Percent and R-1L at Twenty
The two low-coverage residential districts are the ones that surprise people. R-1R caps impervious cover at 5 percent of total lot area and R-1L at 20 percent, which on many lots is consumed substantially by the house and its access before any additional flatwork is considered.
On that ground a new patio or a widened drive is an exercise in finding the remaining margin. It is entirely workable, but it has to be designed against a measured figure rather than sketched to a comfortable size and submitted hopefully.
The design responses are real rather than merely smaller. Ribbon strips instead of a full-width drive, a patio shaped around what it needs to hold, and permeable treatment where it suits all leave more of the allowance available for whatever the owner wants next.
The Fifty Percent Residential Districts
R-1S, R-1M, R-1T, R-2 and R-4 all carry a 50 percent maximum, which is a materially different design problem from the low-coverage districts. Half a lot is a generous allowance and most ordinary residential flatwork fits inside it without difficulty.
Even there it is worth measuring rather than assuming. Half of a small lot is not much area in absolute terms, and a house, a drive, a walk and a patio can approach the figure on a compact plot more quickly than an owner expects.
We run the numbers on every job regardless of district, because the cost of checking is an hour and the cost of not checking is a redesign. Where there is plenty of headroom we say so and stop worrying about it.
Sixty Percent, and the Airport Lots
Several districts sit at 60 percent, including the restricted residential district associated with aircraft and a range of commercial and light industrial districts. The platted airport lots go to 100 percent, which is the one place in the ordinance where coverage is not the constraint at all.
That spread inside a single city is the point worth carrying away. There is no citywide residential figure to quote, and any number offered without naming the district it belongs to is not an answer.
What Counts Toward the Number
Structures, Patios and Parking Areas, By Name
The ordinance does not leave the composition to interpretation. It names the principal and accessory structures, patios and parking areas explicitly, which removes the argument people sometimes try about whether a patio is really cover.
Naming parking areas alongside patios also catches the surface owners most often overlook. A parking apron or a widened area beside a drive is cover in exactly the way the house is, and it is measured the same way.
On a lakeside lot that catches boat and trailer parking in particular. A hardstanding added informally over the years is still cover, and it appears in the calculation whether or not anybody ever called it a parking area.
Any Other Impervious Cover of the Ground
The clause closes with any other impervious cover of the ground, which is a deliberately general catch-all. Anything that stops water reaching the soil counts, whether or not it has a name in the list.
We take that at face value when calculating, and we would rather present a client with a conservative number that survives review than an optimistic one that does not. An allowance calculated generously in your own favor is a review comment waiting to be written.
Measuring What Is Already There
The calculation starts with the existing condition, and on an established lot that means measuring rather than trusting a plat. Additions, replacements and surfaces added over decades all count, and none of them announce themselves on an old drawing.
So a proper survey of existing cover is the first output of our visit. It is also the single most useful thing an owner gets from it, because it tells them what they have left to spend across every future project, not only this one.
That figure is worth keeping. Owners who know their remaining allowance make better decisions about what to build in what order, and they stop discovering the limit at the point where it blocks something they had already committed to.
Designing Flatwork to the Cover You Have
Establishing the District First
Nothing can be sized until the district is known, and the district is a property-specific fact rather than a neighborhood one. We establish it, then read the applicable maximum out of Table A rather than working from a remembered figure.
Permits are filed through the city’s online portal, and the building official and City Engineer are the people the application actually reaches. Getting the coverage arithmetic right before submission is what keeps that a short process.
Where a Planned Development Changes the Answer
Table A is the general rule and not a universal one. A planned development can carry its own standards, so the correct answer for a particular property is whatever governs that property rather than whatever the table says for the base district.
We check for that rather than assuming the table applies. It cuts both ways, sometimes allowing more than the base district and sometimes less, and either way it is settled by looking rather than by inference.
Working Inside the Remaining Allowance
Once the number is known the design work is genuinely interesting rather than merely constrained. Sizing a patio to the space available, shaping a drive to serve its purpose without surplus area, and deciding what earns its coverage all produce a better-considered result than an unconstrained sketch.
There are related rules that push in the same direction. Trees counted toward the minimum tree requirement must be at least two inches in diameter and sit at least three feet from any impervious cover, and every area that is not impervious cover has to be landscaped to the property lines, so the uncovered ground is not spare space either.
Lago Vista sits on the northern shore of Lake Travis, much of it on a peninsula extending across about 15.52 square miles of hill country, and water quality here is regulated through the Highland Lakes Watershed Ordinance the city carries in its own code rather than through any aquifer program. Between that, the coverage table and a driveway slope capped at 12 percent, the shape and size of flatwork here is decided by documents well before it is decided by taste.
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