Creating a Curvaceous Polished Pervious Concrete Patio

What do you do when you love to entertain in your backyard, but every time it rains your backyard gets flooded with puddles? That was the problem one of our clients was trying to solve when they discovered pervious concrete. The only problem was that many of the examples they saw online were mostly rectangular, solid color, installations - something that would not provide a unique show-piece for their backyard. They wanted something that was a talking point for their guests, a patio that stood out from the rest. Luckily, they contacted Bay Area Pervious Concrete. Working with them we developed this custom designed curvaceous patio. 

The patio was designed to flow around the backyard, to provide enough room for entertaining, while still leaving room for the owner's gardening projects. Best of all, the pervious concrete put an end to the flooding and puddling issues that sometimes put a damper their party plans.

To create the visual interest that the owner desired colored borders were tooled in by our NRMCA Certified Installers and Technicians. A Polished Pervious finish was also applied to the large center section, while the colored border was left in the Classic Pervious Concrete finish. The terra cotta color was chosen for the border to compliment existing walkways along the sides of the house. We achieved this unique look using only one concrete pour, rather than the standard two pours that most borders tend to require. This allowed us to pass along some savings, in time and money, to the owners, while still achieving a hand-crafted result.

When our clients request something unique Bay Area Pervious Concrete delivers! Let us know what you think. If you have a unique pervious concrete project you want to discuss, please Contact Us.

Arana Gulch Trail - A Revisit

If you haven't been lucky enough to experience the renovated Arana Gulch Trail in Santa Cruz yet, you are in luck! Thanks to a video shot by Greg McPheeters, of People Power,  you can ride the trail from anywhere.

We are so happy that people are excited about the new trail and are sharing their experiences of it. If you have your own Arana Gulch trail photos to share we would love to see them.

Backyard Greenhouse with Pervious!

This just in:
A backyard greenhouse with a pervious concrete floor that lets in the sunshine and lets out the water! Check out the video below:

The backyard greenhouse will function as much as a plant habitat as a personal retreat. I understand a chair, and a reading light will go in there, so that the owners can enjoy the plants and sunshine even in the chillier winter months. That sure looks cozy! What do you think?

Sneak Peek of Boeddekker Park- A Tenderloin gem

The Grand Opening of Boeddeker Park is on December 10, 2014 from 1-4pm. The park is located in the Tenderloin at 246 Eddy Street in San Francisco. Why are we so excited about this park? Because most of the hardscape is our Fine Grain Pervious Concrete and it looks gorgeous!

We hope you swing by to check it out, either on the 10th or sometime after. It has exercise equipment for adults, play equipment for children and seating and grass for general playing. It is a lovely open oasis in the middle of the Tenderloin. For more information about this park click here to visit San Francisco’s Recreation & Parks page.

PIP-CAT Scans of Pervious Concrete

In keeping with the Pervious In Paradise look back, we have Dr. Narayanan Neithalath Ph.D. P.E.’s presentation of pervious concrete modeling featuring one of my favorite parts- a clip of a pervious cylinder in a CAT scan!

Dr. Neithalath’s presentation was on his research on the effect of mix design on pore structure and infiltration performance. Currently, the state of the art is rife with trial and error which ends up, at worse, with pavement failures, and best, an inconsistent mix. He wants to really understand how different aspects of the pervious concrete mix affect the different performance attributes. In this way, he wants to be able to dial in a pervious mix, with the exact attributes required for the ideal functioning of the installation.

The key feature of pervious concrete is the porosity, which we are all familiar with. Permeability is linearly related to porosity, and while that is obvious, it forms a helpful and fundamental baseline for one aspect of pervious concrete as a hardscape. Other aspects of pervious concrete are less well understood and they include types and seriousness of particle retention or clogging; oil retention, as some are considering pervious concrete as a bio-filter; strength and fracture, for structural considerations; as well as how mix design informs the size, type and structure of the voids. Dr. Neithalath is working to understand how all of these factors come together to form computational performance models for consistent designable pavements. In turn that would create a matrix of variable that could be controlled to create very precise mix designs for producers and installers.

My favorite part of Dr. Neithalath’s presentation was the video he presented of a pervious concrete cylinder in a CATscan, going all the way throughout, such that the void patterns were completely observable. Below you can see the video. I found the whole thing hypnotizing. What do you think?

To see more about Dr. Neithalath’s work, you can go to his faculty page here.

Pervious In Paradise, A Look Back

(‘View from the Hotel’ photo credit: Bob Banka)

Pervious in Paradise was a great conference. There were great presentations, solid attendance and wonderful networking! And every night, FIREWORKS!! Well, those might have been for the SeaWorld guests, who were adjacent to the conference site, but we enjoyed it nonetheless!

As we get materials and permission, we will be posting briefs on a few of the presentations. There were some fantastic new ideas, ongoing development of existing ideas and industry knowledge getting more refined. Highlights included 

• pervious concrete site and pavement design with Michael Hein P.E. and Chris Estes, ASLA,

• notes from the Puget Sound with Andrew Marks P.E.,

• some truly innovative applications of pervious concrete with Muhannad Suleiman, Ph.D.,

• great modeling of voids and their implication with Narayanan Neithalath, Ph.D. P.E.

• discussions of fibers and silica fume with John Kevern Ph.D. P.E. LEED AP

There were many good speakers, and solid content throughout. More soon, and we are already looking forward to the next conference! Did you go? What did you think? Your comments are always appreciated!

Santa Cruz loves Pervious Concrete

....for park multi-use trails!!

Revisited the trail in March 2015.

While we know pervious concrete is a great multi-use trail material, the City of Santa Cruz spent years seeking the perfect trail material before they settled on pervious concrete for the Arana Gulch multi-use trail project. They needed something that was safe and non-slip in all weather conditions, accessible for wheelchairs in all weather, protected water quality, was permeable, low maintenance, and looks the part- clearly pervious concrete! 

The City agreed that pervious concrete met all their needs and then some. Below is the list of features they considered in selecting pervious concrete:

• Durable;  does not rut, ravel or crack easily 
• Strong; stays firm, level and safe
• Long life expectancy
• Low glare
• Integral color of native earth
• Low maintenance
• Good for wheelchairs, strollers etc.
• Less inviting for skateboards and fast traffic
• Accommodates light maintenance vehicles
• Rustic appearance
• Porous 
• Cost effective

We don’t need to quote them further, read their original blog post for more details. Great work, Santa Cruz!! Even more great they hired BAPC to install it. Above you can see a photo of the Broadway Brommer Arana Gulch path that we installed.  If you use the Arana Gulch Broadway Brommer Multi-Use path, send us your photos, and we would love to post them!

Pervious Concrete for Stanford Faculty Housing

We just finished another residential driveway, this time in the faculty housing area of Stanford University’s campus. This mix features an integral concrete color called ‘Sandstone’ and a modern landscaping. What do you think? 

The view from the front steps:

The view, heading to the street:

Pervious Parking Stalls in Aptos

Parking stalls never looked so good! Here you can see, courtesy of Google maps, the top down look at parking stalls for this large apartment complex in Soquel, California. Below, you can see up close, pervious parking stalls with marking paint. While we don’t encourage AC pavement draining onto adjacent pervious concrete as a design concept, this went in well, and will be in service for a long time. Find more photos below! 

Pervious Concrete Dynamic System Modeling

We have been working with architects, engineers, homeowners and municipalities to really explain how pervious concrete is a comprehensive storm water mitigation device. It has proven difficult to help people to wrap their heads around how allowing water to soak in to where it falls, using pervious concrete, is a viable storm water management strategy - so we have started to use Dynamic System Modeling as a tool to help explain what is happening in a pervious concrete slab, and how much water it can infiltrate over time. 

When we use the concept of infiltration over time, pervious concrete systems provide huge capacity, far exceeding most climate’s most intense storm events. That is most easily demonstrated using a software modeling system. This allows insight as to a system’s capacity, and informs design, to ensure that the pavement and drain rock base will meet or exceed the required storm water infiltration amounts.

Contact us for a consultation on your project or to schedule an office presentation to learn more!

Pervious in Paradise is coming up!

It is time again for the most glorious of the pervious concrete conferences - The NPCPA Pervious in Paradise! It is where many of the pervious concrete thinkers and doers get together to exchange ideas and enjoy a new beautiful location - this time in San Diego.

We are looking forward to it particularly as BAPC’s David Liguori will be discussing reinforced pervious concrete and how rebar is not ever an appropriate reinforcement technique for pervious concrete. You can see more of the speakers here. We invite you to join us!

To get you all more excited about the conference we have some of the photos from the last Pervious In Paradise here!

Evolution Architectural Pervious Concrete Certificate of Endorsement!

We are excited to announce that we, at Bay Area Pervious Concrete, hold an Evolution Architectural Pervious Concrete Certificate of Endorsement from Evolution Paving to install their Architectural Fine Pervious Concrete sidewalk mix! We have worked with Evolution paving on a project in Sonoma, more photos here, installing the fine sidewalk mix, and we have it down - pun intended. 

Please contact us for pricing and references so that we can install for you soon!

Polished Pervious Driveway with COLOR

When we came up with Polished Pervious™ our Research and Development crew immediately saw the great possibility of using integral color with polished pervious concrete. Getting it installed on a project proved to take a bit longer - but now it is here and it looks STUNNING! 
Well, see for yourself-

What do you think? Do you like this look?

Pervious Concrete and Maintenance - Your Questions Answered!

Recently, maintaining pervious concrete has come up several times in a week, prompting this blog post. The good news is that this conversation is happening. The bad news is that some people who are not on board with pervious are using an ill-informed maintenance opinion to shape their judgement. We here at Bay Area Pervious Concrete would like to clear up a few of the misconceptions around maintenance.

Firstly, we have found the relevance of maintenance is tied directly to the porosity of the slab itself. A healthy infiltration rate for a slab of pervious concrete is 250-1000 inches per square foot per hour. That ensures that even if the slab was 99% clogged, and the 5 year storm event was 3 inches in 24 hours (as we have here in the Bay Area), that slab would easily be able to absorb that entire storm. So at 99% clogged, the slab would take in 2.5 inches - 10 inches of stormwater per hour per square foot!

Secondly, here are three helpful resources to help with installing a good slab, maintaining it and the fixing a worst case scenario:
1) In order to make sure you get your healthy infiltration rates, an experienced and qualified contractor is required. We have performance based specs that you may review, so that you can be sure to get a good contractor and get a great pervious concrete installation! We also have a BAPC PolishedTM Pervious Spec that we will send at your request.

2) Regular maintenance that can be done, if there is a budget and a desire for a plan. We have put together a maintenance manual that we give to clients at their request when we finish work for them. This gives an idea what you can anticipate, allows one to set up a maintenance schedule, and has resources to call if clogging does occur.

3) Pervious concrete can recover porosity after clogging over years as shown from a research paper from Florida that came out a few years ago. The paper shows several slabs of unmaintained pervious ranging in age from 6 to 20 years old that were able to recover significant infiltration after a pressure washing, vacuuming or a combination of both - after YEARS of neglect. So, no maintenance, no problem!

Do you have any unanswered questions about maintenance and pervious concrete? Submit them here, and we may add them to this post!