Whether you’re a homeowner, developer, or property manager, you have undoubtedly dealt with the headaches of traditional asphalt and concrete paving. Could permeable pavers be a better solution to your paving problems?
Permeable pavers offer a variety of benefits over concrete, asphalt, and other more traditional forms of paving, including better water management, easier installation, and lower environmental impact.
What are permeable pavers, and how do they work? It is essential to understand these innovative products so that you can make an informed decision about whether or not they are suitable for you and your project.
What Are Permeable Pavers?
Permeable pavers are plastic, interlocking grids whose structural framework is engineered to allow space for water to pass through into the ground. You can fill these spaces, often a series of circles, with other permeable materials like gravel, or plant grass to grow up through them.
Permeable pavers have impressive compressive strength and can be used in residential or commercial applications for driveways, parking lots, patios, walkways, and roads. You can use permeable pavers anywhere traditional concrete or asphalt pavement would be used where speeds are lower than 30mph.
Permeable paving systems can eliminate the negative features traditionally associated with gravel driveways, like rutting and spilling, and they prevent grass from dying when being driven on.
How Do Permeable Pavers Work?
Unlike concrete which requires extensive formwork and finishing, or asphalt, which relies on expensive machinery, you can easily install permeable pavers without special equipment or years of experience. While concrete or asphalt paving funnels stormwater towards storm drains and detention ponds, permeable pavers allow water to pass directly through them and re-enter the water table.
What Are the Benefits of Permeable Paving Systems?
There are a variety of benefits to using permeable paving systems, including better stormwater management, reduced runoff, maximized land use, and more.
Stormwater Management
By allowing stormwater to pass directly through their surface, permeable pavers naturally replenish the water table. Additionally, by installing permeable paving, you can help alleviate some of the stress on your city or town’s overworked storm drains.
With concrete or asphalt paving, stormwater flows off these impermeable surfaces, down the street, and into a drain. During large storms or during seasons that experience significant rainfall, the drains can quickly become overfull and cause irritating puddles or even flash floods.
By redirecting your stormwater, you are depriving your local geography of its natural groundwater supply, which can be detrimental to the health of your environment. You can easily remedy these issues by using permeable paving.
Impervious Cover Code Compliant
Some cities and towns have strict impervious cover codes in place to reduce stress on stormwater systems and help replenish vital local groundwater supplies. These codes typically limit the number of impervious surfaces a property or residence may legally have. One of the best ways to comply with these codes is to use permeable pavers instead of concrete or asphalt.
ADA Compliant
Permeable pavers can build excellent, environmentally-friendly walking surfaces for people of all abilities. With careful installation, teamwork, and good old-fashioned elbow grease, Boy Scout troops installed a beautiful ADA-compliant walkway in the New River Gorge National Park using TRUEGRID® permeable pavers. The new walkway provides unprecedented access for people with limited mobility.
Reduced Heat Island Effect
When large urban areas are built out of substantial amounts of asphalt, concrete, brick, and other industrial materials, they can experience an effect referred to as “heat island effect.”
Concrete, asphalt, and brick absorb the Sun’s heat at a much higher rate than natural, organic materials. When a whole community is constructed from these heat-absorbing materials, the local temperature can significantly exceed the surrounding areas. Using permeable pavers to create grass walkways, paths, and other high-traffic surfaces can greatly reduce an area’s heat island effect. Stone-filled permeable surfaces can have up to 40% void space and countless surface angles to reduce absorbed and reflected heat compared to asphalt and concrete.
Environmentally-Friendly
In addition to replenishing groundwater supplies, TRUEGRID permeable pavers are made from 100% post-consumer recycled HDPE, which saves millions of pounds of plastics from entering our landfills.
Maximizes Land Usage
When building a new neighborhood or community, developers often have to sacrifice a large portion of otherwise usable land for the use of a detention pond. Detention ponds collect the runoff produced by all of the impermeable surfaces used to construct communities. However, by using permeable pavers, developers can reassign most, if not all, of the land previously reserved for water detention back to housing.
Cost Effective
Unlike concrete and asphalt paving which cracks and splits with the natural movement of the ground, permeable paving is immune to such damage. Due to its flexibility and resilience, permeable paving requires very little maintenance compared to traditional paving materials, which saves money over the long haul.
Additionally, the installation costs for permeable pavers are substantially lower than that of traditional paving materials. Complicated formwork and specialized finishing techniques are required for concrete work, not to mention the necessary concrete truck for larger projects. Asphalt requires special tools and machinery to heat the material upwards of 350 degrees, a steam roller for compaction and smoothing, and a crew of workers to get the job done.
Permeable pavers can be easily installed by any motivated DIYer, don’t require special tools, and can be properly installed by one person. All of these factors contribute to a significantly lower labor cost during installation.
3 TRUEGRID Permeable Pavers That Can Transform Your Property
PRO LITE
The PRO LITE residential paver is perfect for creating beautifully durable grass or gravel walkways, driveways, parking lots, and paths.
PRO PLUS
The PRO PLUS industrial paver is engineered for industry-leading compressive strength, which makes it the perfect option for permeable parking lots, heavy machinery storage, and roads.
ROOT®
ROOT® is a permeable paving system specifically developed for high-traffic existing grass areas. Simply lay the pavers into the existing grass, soak the site, and press the pavers into the soil. The grass will grow up through the paver, and its delicate roots will be protected during walking, driving, or parking.
Choose TRUEGRID for Economical and Ecological Paving Solutions
Since 2013, TRUEGRID has been producing products that offer an environmentally-friendly alternative to traditional paving products.
TRUEGRID permeable pavers are manufactured 100% in the USA from 100% post-consumer recycled HDPE, and help deliver millions of gallons of water back to the water table and keep millions of pounds of plastic out of our landfills.
Want to create your own beautifully durable paving project? Check out the full line of TRUEGRID products, or get an estimate online and discover how you can be true to your project and true to the environment with TRUEGRID!
