Business Opportunities Weblog

Urban Breakthrough: Pervious Concrete

By on March 23, 2013 in Ideas

Normally, when rain water lands on concrete, it pools or runs downhill until it reaches a storm drain that then pipes the water far away from the site of the initial downpour. This has a negative impact on the local groundwater, since rain is the primary way that groundwater stocks are replenished. A new concrete called pervious concrete that allows water to drain right through it, eliminating the need for drains. How will this change cities?

In the video below, watch as 1500 gallons of water is is drained right through the concrete.

NPR’s Science Friday has more.

architecture construction

Business Opportunities Weblog editor and publisher Dane Carlson lives in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, just 15 miles from Yosemite National Park. He accidentally became a professional blogger in 2001. He has added 12,208 posts to the site.

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  • Tom Rockwell

    Pervious Concrete!
    This is great. Being in construction all my life and being a contractor trying to balance retention and nonpervious surface runoff this is great! Where do I go, who do I see about involvement in this product. I’m excite and enthusiastic to get started.
    Tom Rockwell

  • Chris

    The problem with this material, is lack of long life, expensive to make, and it plugs up over a a fairly short time, depending on the amount of dust and things like tire dust it is exposed to!
    When you look at the cost of making retention basins versus the cost of this material and then realistically look at the land surface area of the planet covered by all of the cities and towns in the world, about 2 1/2 percent currently, and then the small actual amount of surface are covered by concrete, it quickly becomes a fools errand working by this material.
    It is more about people listening to the uneducated fear mongers working so hard to control things, without facts to back up what is really happening on our planet!
    http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3120/is_6_77/ai_n29183173/

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