Presentation Series: Planning with Pervious Concrete

Want to learn why pervious concrete is the most cost effective stormwater BMP? Bay Area Pervious Concrete's David Liguori will be providing a series of informational presentations in February and March. By attending the following events you will learn how a pervious concrete stormwater system can simplify your site designs, decrease project costs, while complying with municipal stormwater regulations. 

Planning with Pervious Concrete

February 3rd, 11:45am-1:00pm
APWA-Sacramento Chapter Luncheon
Dante Club, 2330 Fair Oaks Boulevard, Sacramento , CA , 95825

Pervious concrete stormwater management systems, which operate according to a principle known as LATIS, or Large Area Thin Infiltration Systems, are considerably more effective and less costly than other BMPs when designed appropriately. A 180° departure from conventional design, LATIS requires a major re-think. This presentation illustrates this new design approach and walks participants through the building of a system model to reduce overall project costs, while complying with regulations. Register here.

PERVIOUS CONCRETE 2.0: Beyond the Basics

March 8th, 11:45am-1:00pm
East Bay Municipal Engineers Lunch Meeting
Legends at Diablo Creek, 4050 Port Chicago Hwy, Concord, CA 94520

Have you attended the introductory presentation and feel like you know enough to be dangerous? Take it to the next level and join us while we dive deeper into the details of designing and specifying a Pervious Concrete water management system based on LATIS ( Large Area Thin Infiltration System). We will go through the latest specifications released in the fall of 2016, take apart several designs, study various details, cover base and subgrade prep as well as the finer aspects of infiltration.

 This presentation will give you what you need to put pen to paper and supercharge, by simplifying, your site design. Register here. 

Can’t make it to one of these events? Have your organization’s lunch and learn coordinator contact us to schedule a presentation at your office.

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!

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!

USGBC Greener Builder - a fantastic conference!

This was originally posted June 19, 2013.

Lauren Wray, our Director of Marketing, attended the USGBC’s Greener Builder Conference last week. Apparently the Greener Builder Conference is even GREENER then the Green Builder Conference that occurred in November! This conference did not disappoint. From the opening panel, pictured below, featuring Jeffrey A. Birdwell, Michael Deane, Kevin Hydes, Kirsten Ritchie and moderated by Cliff Brewis, the focus was on leading edge sustainability, and strategies to get regenerative planning and innovation into the building industry.

There were good options for every panel, but as pervious concrete sub-contractors, we went to the subcontractor panel, hosted by John Home and Jeff Swinyer of Rudolph and Sletten, pictured below.

Lauren, pictured below, was interested in the drive toward clear performance specs to allow for differentiation at the sub-contractor level. As a pervious concrete subcontractor, we differentiate ourselves with our embrace of leading edge technologies for mix design and installation. Unfortunately, many current specs don’t reflect the progress in the installation, mix designs, equipment and curing materials that has developed in the last few years. 

The next panel we attended discussed Environmental Product Disclosures (EPDs), a labeling system that discloses the resource footprint of the many materials that go into the built environment. The panel also included the next iteration, the Health Product Disclosures, which discloses the materials and chemicals that have been proven or correlated in causing health problems for humans.
Central Concrete, a sponsor of the event, has been heavily involved in the EPD project for disclosing the materials for the concrete industry. Below is a photo of the panelists from this panel.

The last panel of the day went over Net Zero Energy buildings with John Andary and Scott Shell, pictured below. It was a fascinating look at what is currently possible with technologies now: buildings that use as much energy as they make. The building case studies discussed also illustrated how livable and workable these spaces were, with thought for passive heating and cooling. Many of the designs features windows that bounced daylight far into the building envelope, as well as fresh air ventilation. It was a wonderful talk, even though their topics stayed primarily inside the building envelope.

The final speaker, Jason McLennan, pictured below, gave a wonderful talk on self limits. His talk really stood out for his candor and optimism. For a young guy, has accomplished quite a bit in the green building spaces. Currently he is pioneering the Living Building movement.

After his talk, Jason McLennan was joined by George Salah, of Google, and David Gottfried of the USGBC. They discussed everything from George’s living-building home construction project to Jason’s motivation to do the work that he does: “I give a shit.” That was wonderful.

FInally, after it was all over, we found that there was a fantastic array of beers, wine and snacks to round out the day’s networking. It was a great event, and one we will look forward to attending next year!

A BIG thank you to Charlie Nucci, who took these photos at the event. You can find more about Charlie and his work at his website here.

NRMCA Technician Training in Truckee - A Success!

David teaches the NRMCA Pervious Concrete Technician class by the NRMCA local sponsoring group ACI Northern California chapter. The class location was in Truckee, CA and after the class and test, the class went out the TNT Materials Yard for a demonstration pour. We had good pervious pouring weather and great participation! If you would like more information for upcoming NRMCA pervious concrete training classes, go to the ACI website here: www.ACI-NCAWNV.org.

Check out the photos below: