Permeable paving

Stone paving in Santarém, Portugal.

Permeable paving is a range of materials and techniques for paving roads, cycle-paths, parking lots and pavements that allow the movement of water and air around the paving material. Although some porous paving materials appear nearly indistinguishable from nonporous materials, their environmental effects are qualitatively different. Whether pervious concrete, porous asphalt, paving stones or bricks, all these pervious materials allow precipitation to percolate through areas that would traditionally be impervious and infiltrates the stormwater through to the soil below.

Description and Applications

Permeable grass & gravel pavement or porous asphalt is made of thin-walled HDPE plastic rings connected by an interlocking geogrid structure, installed on a porous base course for residential applications. The role of the rings is to transfer loads from the surface to the grid structure to an engineered course base. Porous paving is installed on a prepared base; the paving system uses a grass filler. A grid is rolled out over the base course and seeded with a grass mixture. It includes fertilizer and soil polymer mix for spreading.

In new suburban growth, porous pavements protect watersheds. In areas already built out, old town centers, redevelopment, and reconstruction are opportunities for environmental rehabilitation. Permeable paving is an important component in low impact development, a process for land development in the United States that attempts to minimize impacts on water quality and the similar sustainable urban drainage systems in the United Kingdom.

The infiltration capacity of the native soil is a key design consideration for determining the depth of base rock for stormwater storage or for whether an underdrain system is needed.

Advantages

Managing runoff

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Diagram of a Permeable Paving system.

Permeable paving surfaces have been demonstrated as effective in managing runoff from paved surfaces. Large volumes of urban runoff causes serious erosion and siltation in surface water bodies.

Controlling pollutants

Permeable paving surfaces keep the pollutants in place in the soil or other material underlying the roadway, and allow water seepage to groundwater recharge while preventing the stream erosion problems. They capture the heavy metals that fall on them, preventing them from washing downstream and accumulating inadvertently in the environment. In the void spaces, naturally occurring micro-organisms digest car oils, leaving little but carbon dioxide and water; the oil ceases to exist as a pollutant. Rainwater infiltration is usually less than that of an impervious pavement with a separate stormwater management facility somewhere downstream.

Trees

Porous pavements give urban trees the rooting space they need to grow to full size. A "structural-soil" pavement base combines structural aggregate with soil; a porous surface admits vital air and water to the rooting zone. This integrates healthy ecology and thriving cities, with the living tree canopy above, the city's traffic on the ground, and living tree roots below.

Disadvantages

Runoff volumes

Permeable pavements are designed to replace Effective Impervious Areas (EIAs), not to manage stormwater from other impervious surfaces on site. Use of this technique must be part of an overall on site management system for stormwater, and is not a replacement for other techniques.

Also, in a large storm event, the water table below the porous pavement can rise to a higher level preventing the precipitation from being absorbed into the ground.

The best way to prevent this problem is to allow for adequate rain water run off at the pavement design stage.

Pollutant load

Highly contaminated runoff can be generated by some land uses where pollutant concentrations exceed those typically found in stormwater. These "hot spots" include commercial nurseries, recycling facilities, fueling stations, industrial storage, marinas, some outdoor loading facilities, public works yards, hazardous materials generators (if containers are exposed to rainfall), vehicle service and maintenance areas, and vehicle and equipment washing and steam cleaning facilities. Since porous pavement is an infiltration practice, it should not be applied at stormwater hot spots due to the potential for groundwater contamination. All contaminated runoff should be prevented from entering municipal storm drain systems by using best management practices (BMPs) for the specific industry or activity.

Weight and traffic volumes

Reference sources differ on whether low or medium traffic volumes and weights are appropriate for porous pavements. For example, around truck loading docks and areas of high commercial traffic, porous pavement is sometimes cited as being inappropriate. However, given the variability of products available, the growing number of existing installations in North America and targeted research by both manufacturers and user agencies, the range of accepted applications seems to be expanding. Some concrete paver companies have developed products specifically for industrial applications. Working examples exist at fire halls, busy retail complex parking lots, and on public and private roads, including intersections in parts of North America with quite severe winter conditions.

Siting

Permeable pavements may not be appropriate when land surrounding or draining into the pavement exceeds a 20 percent slope, where pavement is down slope from buildings or where foundations have piped drainage at their footers. The key is to ensure that drainage from other parts of a site is intercepted and dealt with separately rather than being directed onto permeable surfaces.

Climate

Cold climates may present special challenges. Road salt contains chlorides that could migrate through the porous pavement into groundwater. Snow plow blades could catch block edges and damage surfaces. Sand cannot be used for snow and ice control on perveous asphalt or concrete because it will plug the pores and reduce permeability. Infiltrating runoff may freeze below the pavement, causing frost heave, though design modifications can reduce this risk. These potential problems do not mean that porous pavement cannot be used in cold climates. Porous pavement designed to reduce frost heave has been used successfully in Norway. Furthermore, experience suggests that rapid drainage below porous surfaces increases the rate of snow melt above.

Cost

Some estimates put the cost of permeable paving at two to three times that of conventional asphalt paving. Using permeable paving, however, can reduce the cost of providing larger or more stormwater BMPs on site, and these savings should be factored into any cost analysis. In addition, the off-site environmental impact costs of not reducing on-site stormwater volumes and pollution have historically been ignored or assigned to other groups (local government parks, public works and environmental restoration budgets, fisheries losses, etc.) The City of Olympia, Washington is studying the use of pervious concrete quite closely and finding that new stormwater regulations are making it a viable alternative to stormwater ponds.

Longevity and maintenance

Some permeable pavements require frequent maintenance because grit or gravel can block the open pores. This is commonly done by industrial vacuums that suck up all the sediment. If maintenance is not carried out on a regular basis, the porous pavements can begin to function more like impervious surfaces. With more advanced paving systems the levels of maintenance needed can be greatly decreased, elastomerically bound glass pavements (see below) requires less maintenance than regular concrete paving as the glass bound pavement has 50% more void space.

Some permeable paving products are prone to damage from misuse, such as drivers who tear up patches of plastic & gravel grid systems by "joy riding" on remote parking lots at night. The damage is not difficult to repair but can look unsightly in the meantime. Grass pavers require supplemental watering in the first year to establish the vegetation, otherwise they may need to be re-seeded. Regional climate also means that most grass applications will go dormant during the dry season. While brown vegetation is only a matter of aesthetics, it can influence public support for this type of permeable paving.

Traditional permeable concrete paving bricks tend to lose their color in relatively short time which can be costly to replace or clean and is mainly due to the problem of efflorescence.

Efflorescence

Efflorescence is a hardened crystalline deposit of salts, which migrate from the center of concrete or masonry pavers to the surface to form insoluble calcium carbonates that harden on the surface. Given time, these deposits form much like how a stalactite takes shape in a cave, except in this case on a flat surface. Efflorescence usually appears white, gray or black depending on the region.

Over time efflorescence begins to negatively affect the overall appearance of masonry/concrete and may cause the surfaces to become slippery when exposed to moisture. If left unchecked, this efflorescence will harden whereby the calcium/lime deposits begin to affect the integrity of the cementatious surface by slowly eroding away the cement paste and aggregate. In some cases it will also discolor stained or coated surfaces.

Efflorescence forms more quickly in areas that are exposed to excessive amounts of moisture such as near pool decks, spas, and fountains or where irrigation runoff is present. As a result, these affected regions become very slick when wet thereby causing a significant loss of "friction coefficient". This can be of serious concern especially as a public safety issue to individuals, principals and property owners by exposing them to possible injury and increased general liability claims.

Efflorescence remover chemicals can be used to remove calcium/lime build-up without damaging the integrity of the paving surface.

Types

Installation of porous pavements is no more difficult than that of dense pavements, but has different specifications and procedures which must be strictly adhered to. Nine different families of porous paving materials present distinctive advantages and disadvantages for specific applications. Here are examples:

Pervious concrete

Pervious concrete is widely available, can bear frequent traffic, and is universally accessible. Pervious concrete quality depends on the installer's knowledge and experience.

Porous asphalt

Porous asphalt is mixed at conventional asphalt plants, but fine (small) aggregate is omitted from the mixture. The remaining large, single-sized aggregate particles leave open voids that give the material its porosity and permeability. Under the porous asphalt surface is a base course of further single-sized aggregate. Porous asphalt surfaces are being used on highways to improve driving safety by removing water from the surface.

Single-sized aggregate

Single-sized aggregate without any binder, e.g. loose gravel, stone-chippings, is another alternative. Although it can only be safely used in very low-speed, low-traffic settings, e.g. car-parks and drives, its potential cumulative area is great.

Porous turf

Porous turf, if properly constructed, can be used for occasional parking like that at churches and stadiums. Plastic turf reinforcing grids can be used to support the increased load. Living turf transpires water, actively counteracting the "heat island" with what appears to be a green open lawn.

Open-jointed blocks

Open-jointed blocks are concrete or stone units with open, permeable spaces between the units. They give an architectural appearance, and can bear surprisingly heavy traffic, particularly interlocking concrete pavers, excepting high-volume or high-speed roads. Some products are polymer-coated and entirely porous face.

Resin bound paving

Resin bound paving is a mixture of resin binder and aggregate. Clear resin is used to fully coat each aggregate particle before laying. Enough resin is used to allow each aggregate particle to adhere to one another and to the base yet leave voids for water to permeate through. Resin bound paving provides a strong and durable surface that is suitable for pedestrian and vehicular traffic in applications such as pathways, driveways, car parks and access roads.

Bound recycled glass porous pavement

Elastomerically bound recycled glass porous pavement consisting of bonding processed post consumer glass with a mixture of resins, pigments, and binding agents. The product trademarked as FilterPave provides a permeable paving material that also reuses materials that would otherwise be disposed in landfills. Approximately 75 percent of glass in the U.S. is disposed in landfills.

See also

Stormwater management practices related to roadways:

• Bioretention
• Bioswale

References & Notes

• Ferguson, Bruce K. (2005). Porous Pavements. Boca Raton: CRC Press. ISBN 978-0849326707.
• National Conference on Sustainable Drainage (UK)
• NOVATECH - International Conference On Sustainable Techniques And Strategies In Urban Water Management
• U.S. Federal Highway Administration. Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center. McLean, VA. "Waste Glass." Recycled Materials in the Highway Environment. Accessed 2010-07-05.

External links

• "Permable Paving & SUDS" - Precast Concrete Paving & Kerb Assn. (UK)
• Sustainable Drainage: A Review of Published Material on the Performance of Various SUDS Components - Construction Industry Research & Information Assn. (UK)
• Pervious Concrete Blog - Matt Offenberg
• "Pervious Concrete Pavement: An Overview" - National Ready Mixed Concrete Assn. (US)
• Graphic showing water interacting with permeable paving
• "Toolbase: Permable Pavement" - National Assn. of Homebuilders (US)