McNichols Steel Grating: 7 Questions to Ask Before You Order (I Learned the Hard Way)

If you're about to place your first McNichols steel grating order, or if you've been burned by mis-specs and rework before, this is for you. Six years of handling grating orders. Seven significant mistakes. Roughly $14,200 in wasted budget. All documented, all avoidable. These are the questions I wish someone had answered before my first order.

1. What's the #1 mistake people make with McNichols steel grating?

Bearing bar spacing. Sounds technical. It is.

In 2021, I specified 2" spacing on a pedestrian walkway because standard walkway design in my head said "2 inches is safe." I never checked the load table. The engineer of record rejected it: bearing bars at 19/16" spacing required for the specified wheel load.

That mistake cost $3,200 in fabricated steel (scrap value: pennies on the dollar) plus a one-week project delay while we reordered. What I mean is: the load table isn't a suggestion, it's the spec. Never assume "standard" is good enough for your project.

2. Where can I find the McNichols grating catalog PDF?

Easy one. McNichols publishes their complete grating catalog as a downloadable PDF on mcnichols.com. Search "McNichols grating catalog PDF" and it's typically the first result. It's free, and it includes load tables, bearing bar spacing options, material specs, and standard panel sizes.

I still kick myself for not downloading it during my first year. I ordered piecemeal from the website, paying custom fabrication fees I didn't need to pay. The catalog shows standard panel sizes upfront, so you can design around them and save money. Download it before you call a sales rep. You'll ask smarter questions, and the rep will take you more seriously.

3. Is McNichols grating a good choice for an outdoor shower deck?

Actually, yes—with a twist that cost me a client's trust.

Outdoor shower decks are a genuinely good application for grating. Water drains straight through, the surface dries fast, and with the right material choice it lasts for decades. The twist: don't default to galvanized steel near salt water.

In September 2022, I specified galvanized steel for a beach house outdoor shower. Six months later, white corrosion blooms were visible under the coating and rust streaks ran to the drains. The client wasn't thrilled. We replaced it with stainless steel at nearly double the material cost. The seawater won the fight.

For outdoor shower areas, consider stainless steel for coastal locations. For inland, fiberglass (FRP) grating is worth a look if slip resistance matters even when wet—it has grit embedded in the surface. The fiberglass arrived and honestly, I panicked. It looks different from steel. I kept second-guessing myself. Then we tested it with soap and water, and it outperformed every other option. That's the satisfying part: tested, proven, installed. No complaints since.

4. Is galvanized coating worth it (i.e., the screen protector for your steel)?

Steel grating without coating is like a phone screen without a protector: it works, until it doesn't.

On a $2,400 order in 2021, the buyer asked if we needed galvanized. I said no, to "save money." Outdoors. In Florida. Fourteen months later, rust was streaking the walkway. The upside was saving ~8% upfront. The risk was replacement in 2-5 years. I kept asking myself: is that 8% worth potentially replacing an entire deck? It wasn't.

Hot-dip galvanizing is the glass protector of the metal world. Skip it and the replacement cost is 100% of the project, not 8% upfront. (surprise, surprise.) And if you cut grating to size, you remove the coating at the cut. Touch-up coating is 15 minutes of work. Skipping it turns into rust streaks that ruin the look in season one.

5. What does knowing how to wash a wool sweater have to do with ordering grating?

Everything, if you've ever shrunk one.

I ruined a $300 wool sweater because I didn't check the care label. Machine wash warm, "it'll be fine." It came out child-sized. All I had to do was read the label first. (ugh.)

In 2023, I did the same thing with grating. I skipped the product data sheet for a fiberglass grating line, assuming the load rating matched our usual steel spec. It was 40% lower. The gratings arrived, flexed under a light load test, and back to the drawing board. $4,800 wasted. A lesson learned the hard way: spec sheets are the care label. Read them first, or something expensive shrinks.

6. How much should I expect to pay for a McNichols order?

I'll be honest: McNichols isn't the cheapest, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I've quoted similar specs through cheaper suppliers. You can save 10-15% on base metal, but you also lose the engineering data, the material certs, and the cut tolerance guarantees. On one $5,600 order where we saved $800 going cheaper, we got the material without mill test reports. The inspection demanded them. The supplier took 11 days to provide them—while the project sat idle. We would've paid ten times the $800 to fast-forward that week. (not that we had the option.)

For ballpark budgeting, based on quotes we received in late 2024 and early 2025:

• Galvanized steel bar grating: roughly $8-14 per sq ft in small quantities
• Stainless steel grating: roughly $18-30 per sq ft
• Fiberglass grating: roughly $10-18 per sq ft

These are ranges from actual quotes, not a promise. Verify current pricing at mcnichols.com—rates change with steel prices.

7. What's the cheapest thing you'll ever do on a grating order?

The pre-order checklist. I built ours after mistake #5 (the outdoor shower corrosion issue), and it's the lowest-cost insurance our team has ever used.

Twelve points, one hour of time, and it has caught 47 potential errors in 18 months. Every one of those would have been a delay or a rework. Highlights:

• Confirm bearing bar spacing against the load table—not memory
• Check environmental conditions: coastal? chemical exposure? high traffic?
• Choose material from the corrosion chart, not habit
• Check the catalog PDF for standard sizes before requesting custom
• Specify coating and order touch-up for cut ends
• Request mill test reports at PO time, not after delivery
• Get engineering approval in writing
• Double-check units: inches vs mm (yes, it happens)
• Order one extra panel for test fit on structural firsts

Five minutes of verification beats five days of correction. That sounds like a slogan. It's not. It's the difference between a $4,800 write-off and a smooth install. The checklist has paid for itself dozens of times over.