We’ve been doing a lot of work lately to make our pervious concrete processes even better, and we were excited to get to show it off on a recent job.
Custom Concrete Contracting was hired to do some pervious concrete work for a construction project manager in Bellingham. Because of the size of his property he had to install a pervious driveway instead of the traditional concrete driveway.
You might be aware that the City of Bellingham has special rules for building on property. According to Bellingham Municipal Code 16.80.090, impervious and partially pervious surface areas are limited. Together, the two — impervious and partially pervious — can take up no more than 2,500 square feet or 25 percent of the total lot area.
Note: There are a few exceptions to this general rule, such as for those whose property drains into Basin One of Lake Whatcom, so before you get started, be sure to get in touch with the city regarding specific rules for your property.
In this case, the homeowner was required to install a pervious concrete driveway — considered a partially pervious surface by Bellingham code standards — in order to be able build on his land.
Total impervious square footage alone is limited to 2,000 square feet. In some cases, choosing pervious concrete for the driveway, instead of traditional impervious concrete, means that the footprint of a newly constructed house can be bigger. That can be good news to land owners who want to maximize the use of their property.
What’s even better is that Custom Concrete has refined its process to make pervious concrete even more smooth, even and beautiful. CCC’s pervious concrete jobs now look more like traditional concrete than ever.
As you can see, we went with pervious in the center areas of the driveway and installed a dark gray, stamped border that looks like Italian slate. We also used pervious on the walkway to the front door and extended the Italian slate motif to that area as well.
The hillside slope also makes this job a great candidate for pervious concrete, because it’s less susceptible than traditional concrete to freezing. Thanks to all of the pores in pervious concrete, air can circulate and help melt snow sitting on the surface. Additionally, any water that would otherwise freeze on the driveway is allowed to filter through to the ground beneath.
If you’re building in the Bellingham city limits, consider the benefits of using pervious concrete for your driveways, walkways and patios. Perhaps you can bump up the size of your new house or add an extra garage. Or you could simply use pervious for the benefits it has on the environment by decreasing runoff, especially so near Bellingham’s drinking water supply.
Contact Custom Concrete today to learn more about ways pervious concrete can benefit your residential construction project.