Pervious or porous pavement are a unique and effective means to address important environmental issues and support green, sustainable growth. By capturing stormwater and allowing it to seep into the ground, porous pavements are instrumental in recharging groundwater, reducing stormwater runoff, and meeting U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stormwater regulations. This pavement technology creates more efficient land use by eliminating the need for retention ponds, swales, and other stormwater management devices. In doing so, pervious pavements have the ability to lower overall project costs on a first-cost basis.
Advantages of Pervious Pavements
There are two types of porous pavement: porous asphalt and pervious concrete. Porous asphalt pavement consists of an open-graded coarse aggregate, bonded together by asphalt cement, with sufficient interconnected voids to make it highly permeable to water. Pervious concrete consists of specially formulated mixtures of Portland cement, uniform, open-graded coarse aggregate, and water. Pervious concrete has enough void space to allow rapid percolation of liquids through the pavement. The porous pavement surface is typically placed over a highly permeable layer of open-graded gravel and crushed stone. The void spaces in the aggregate layers act as a storage reservoir for runoff. A filter fabric is placed beneath the gravel and stone layers to screen out fine soil particles. Another variation to the concrete pavement is the use of open celled concrete pavers which provide a durable driving surface and material to plant vegetation which further helps eliminate pollutants.
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Todd Fratzel, P.E.
I'm the Principal Engineer for a large construction company in New Hampshire. I run their design-build division that specializes in custom homes, commercial design-build projects and sub-divisions. I'm a licensed civil and structural engineer with extensive experience in civil and structural design and home construction. My hope is that I can share my experiences with green construction in the home construction, home improvement and home renovation profession with other builders and home owners. I'm also the author of Home Construction Improvement. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions, suggestions or you'd like to inquire about advertising on this site.
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4 comments:
Not that I'm either for or against this currently... but seeing that our highway engineering and construction technology is already decades behind Europe, why would we purposely invite capillary erosion and tempt frost heaving directly underneath our already poorly made roads? Other than that, I'm all for returning local water to the local water table.
I think every pothole just creamed their pants.
This would only work in climates that stayed above freezing temperature all year round. If water can enter it, then ice can enter it. Because ice expands, it then will put uneven pressure on the road and destroy every inch of it.
This idea is not being proposed for roads. The use here is in parking lots where large expanses are being covered with non-porous pavements and creating stormwater runoff problems. This method can and has been used in areas that freeze. However, it does take some special sub-base preparations and extra cost.
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