5/15/2019 Pavingexpert - Permeable and Suds-compliant paving

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Permeable or suds-compliant? 0

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Introduction Permeable Intro

CBPP
Attenuation
CBPP Installation
Either/Or CBPP Test Panel
CBPP History
Suds or
Permeable?

Resin Bound
Cellular Paving
GroundTrax Cell
Pavers
Grass Paving

Suds Intro
Attenuation cells
Suds for Drives
Soakaways

Introduction
There's an unfortunate tendency for contractors, specifiers, homeowners and even
government to talk about "permeable pavements" when what they actually mean is "Suds-
compliant pavements", which can be defined as any pavement from which surface water is
sent to a suds installation from where it may have the opportunity to drain to ground or
be temporarily stored rather than being directly channelled into the public sewer system or
an open watercourse. There is a subtle difference: permeable pavements allow water to pass
through the paving structure, whereas suds-friendly pavements simply direct surface water
to a suds installation such as a soakaway , a swale, etc.

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Attenuation
In some cases, most often due to local ground conditions, a suds installation may direct
some or (more rarely) all of the collected water to the sewer system, but in a manner that
reduces the impact on the sewer system, most often by attenuation.

Attenuation is simply a slowing down, a braking or delaying process whereby the collected
water is released in a slow and steady manner rather than in one big gush. Say, for example,
a storm dumps 50mm of rainwater onto a pavement in an hour. On a standard pavement,
that 50mm would be sent immediately to the sewer system, where it meets up with the
50mm collected from the pavement next door and the 50mm from the car park outside the
shops and the 50mm from the main road. Suddenly, the sewer has a massive amount of
water struggling to find its way through a pipe of limited diameter, and it may be that not all
of the water can pass through there and then. It starts to back up, waiting for a chance to
get into and through the pipe system, and may even start to surcharge through access
covers, gullies and the like.

In an attenuated suds installation, that 50mm of rain is directed to a 'holding tank'. This may
be a permeable sub-base, a sub-base replacement unit, a soakaway or even a buried tank.
That 'holding tank' then releases the water into the ground and/or the sewer system at a
much slower rate, say 10mm per hour, reducing the load on the sewer system, and thereby
reducing the risk of surcharging and flooding.

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Cross-section view through typical permeable pavement Permavoid® sub-base replacement system from Charcon

Either/or:
So: a permeable pavement is a suds-compliant pavement, but a suds-compliant pavement isn't
necessarily a permeable pavement. Consider a macadam driveway on which surface water is
directed towards a linear channel which, in turn, is piped to a soakaway beneath the garden. That
is a suds-compliant pavement, but couldn't be classed as a permeable pavement.

Suds-compliant pavements always feature two key elements: how the water is collected and how
it is then disposed. With concrete block permeable paving, the surface water is collected by
passing through wider-than-usual joints between the individual block pavers and it is dispersed
(usually) by means of a sub-pavement soakaway structure. Returning to the hypothetical suds-
friendly macadam driveway, the surface water is collected by means of gradients on the macadam
surface directing water into a collector channel. It is dispersed via a soakaway that may be some
distance from the actual pavement surface.

In short: it is possible to create suds pavements using any type of paving. It is not always
necessary to use permeable paving, although these surfaces do offer a simple and effective
option.

A non-suds pavement would be any paved

surface that delivered water directly into a
conventional drain, a public sewer or an open
watercourse. A patio that is drained towards a
gully on the corner of the conservatory is
probably not a suds pavement (unless that
gully is connected to a soakaway), and a
driveway that simply relies on endfall to direct
water towards the public highway is not a suds
pavement, because that water will eventually
find its way into a road gully and from there
into the sewer system.

Water can be directed from a non-permeable surface to a Suds

installation

Other permeable paving resources on this site..

Permeable Intro
Concrete Block Permeable Paving - CBPP
CBPP Installation on site
Constructing a CBPP Test Panel
Suds or Permeable?
History of permeable paving

Introduction to Suds
Attenuation cells

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Suds for Drives

Soakaways

Resin Bound Surfacing

Cellular Paving
GroundTrax Cell Pavers
Grass Paving

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