Design and Maintenance of Pervious Paving

Design

Pervious paving systems may be installed at new or existing building sites. In both scenarios, careful planning and soil testing are required. Following design standards developed by manufacturers and government agencies is vitally important to ensure the systems work effectively. Pervious paving systems can be designed to infiltrate any storm event, including the 100-year storm. They can also be used with less costly traditional paving to infiltrate small, frequent rains and the first flush of large storms. Because the first flush of storm water carries the most pollutants, cleaning the first flush has excellent water quality benefits.

Maintenance

Proper and timely maintenance is crucial to ensure sustained function of these stystems over time. Recommended maintenance practices are:

• inspect the site annually
• vacuum the paving periodically to remove any build-up of leaves and dirt; vacuum-type street sweeping is most effective
• inspect after extremely large storms to assure full functioning
• use scraping and shoveling of snow and ice; avoid chemicals and sand

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Last Modified: 07/05/2007