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With much of Australia’s urban environment paved in an impermeable skin of concrete, stone and other materials, consequences like flash flooding and urban heat problems have grown in prevalence.

Planning authorities are progressively regulating in step with these issues, particularly around storm water management. Councils, for example, are requiring that greater percentages of sites under development be ‘soft landscaped area’.

In many cases, ‘permeable paving’ will meet or exceed the requirements, be it pavers with porous material between, special pavers or gravel stabilised with epoxy resin or other bonding agents. Whatever the product specified, experts point out it’s critical that adequate drainage be installed with permeable paving.

The result is often something more akin to a natural landscape, as the water may pass through to underlying structures before infiltration into the water table, or to be redirected.

A major advantage is that the systems can function without compromising the amenity of above-lying floor area, with products available to suit everything from lightweight requirements for covering areas around tree roots and roof gardens to heavy duty durability for car parks and driveways.

Other benefits include erosion control, creating low-maintenance floor areas and eliminating tree roots from lifting and cracking concrete pathways.

Australian firms like Place Design Group in Queensland are making excellent use of the products.

"Wherever possible in the external environs we look to use materials that allow surface water to penetrate back into the ground,” design manager Shaun Egan explains. “In larger civic spaces and especially around existing trees, using a porous pavement is a big advantage as it will allow additional water to infiltrate down to the plants root system rather than the impervious concretes of tiles.

“These materials are usually smaller pebbles bonded together with resins, producing pockets between, which allow water through,” he says.

Such applications have the added benefit of still providing a hard wearing, trafficable surface

Read more at http://www.infolink.com.au/articles/in-focus/possibilities-flow-with-permeable-paving-n2505781#0oy0LvoBe1I7H73K.99