What’s better than walking a dirt path winding gently through rustling trees at Lake Whatcom, accompanied by the soft sounds of nearby lapping waves?
Walking that same path, but on pervious concrete instead of dirt.
As a walking surface, pervious concrete is hard to beat.
Over time, dirt paths can get so compacted that they become an impermeable surface, capturing rainwater and channeling it into small streams that make walking hard — or, at best, muddy and gross.
Gravel is better on the muddy front, as long as it’s replenished (at cost) with regularity.
Traditional concrete also is less muddy, but runoff and stormwater retention can need to be mitigated when covering large areas with concrete.
Pervious concrete, on the other hand, provides a solid, beautiful walking surface that allows rainwater to filter directly into the ground, benefiting the environment by reducing problems with runoff, mud and runaway gravel.
At Custom Concrete, we are big believers in pervious concrete; we’ve completed a number of projects in Bellingham and throughout Whatcom County to introduce pervious to public spaces.
At Bloedel Donovan Park on Lake Whatcom, for example, we replaced traditional concrete sidewalks with an
environmentally friendly pervious path, made of a solid but porous concrete material. The pervious path sits atop a bed of gravel designed to safely filter and disburse rainwater back into the underlying soil.
And in the Barkley area of Bellingham, our flatwork finishers connected two neighborhoods with a custom staircase and pervious sidewalk, replacing an old dirt path that had been worn through the underbrush over time. The pervious concrete provides a long-lasting path that’s even better for the environment than its predecessor while enhancing the beauty of the area many times over.
In a more urban setting, Custom Concrete’s expert crews installed pervious concrete as part of the construction of the roundabout on Northwest Avenue at McLeod Road in Bellingham. The job included large sections of decorative pervious concrete as a means of reducing the amount of standing water that can accumulate during a rainstorm. The result is an attractive, safer and more 
environmentally friendly intersection that benefits drivers, walkers and bicyclists.
As noted above, Custom Concrete Contracting installs so much pervious concrete because we believe in it. Pervious concrete stands the tests of time and usefulness; as a pavement material, it’s a wonderful alternative to traditional concrete in many situations.
Contact the concrete flatwork experts at Custom Concrete today to chat about how pervious can best be used in your next commercial, residential or public works project — and why it’s such a great material for driveways, sidewalks, patios and even streets.