How to Maintain Your Pervious Concrete
It’s important that your permeable pavement inspected annually and having it vacuumed cleaned a minimum at least every one to two years. These cleanings ensure your pervious concrete remains in optimal condition throughout the year, allowing water to properly drain through the surface. In between maintenance, there are a few simple things that you can do to keep your pavement in top shape.
- Inspect the pavement regularly, particularly after heavy periods of rain, to look for obvious clogs or debris on the pavement or in drainage areas.
- Use a leaf blower and/or sweep the pavement every few months, which helps to clean smaller pieces of dirt from the voids in the pavement.
- Use a hose to clean and clear the surface of the pavement. This should be done after sweeping to ensure all dirt and debris has been thoroughly removed.
- Any weeds that grow in the permeable pavement should be removed or sprayed with biodegradable herbicide.
The final step is to make sure you schedule a maintenance routine with your landscape maintenance professional to blow off your pavement surface and prevent sediment from forming.
Establish a Maintenance Service Agreement
Fred Adams Paving Co. is happy to provide a service agreement with our clients that will cover both Best Management Practice (BMP) and Storwater Control Measure (SCM) inspections and in-depth maintenance and repair. With a service agreement in place, the experts from Fred Adams Paving Co. will perform recommended inspections and repairs of your new pavement as needed to ensure it’s in top working order, including:
- Inspect the pavement once a quarter and within 24 hours after every storm event greater than 1.0 inches (or 1.5 inches if in an N.C. Coastal County)
- Vacuum sweep the surface openings in dry weather to remove dry, encrusted sediment. These appear as small, curled “potato chips.” Vacuum and sweeper settings may require adjustments to prevent uptake of aggregate in the pavement openings and joints.
- Maintain any vegetation around the perimeter of the pavement to filter run-off.
- Repair all ruts or deformation in the pavement exceeding ½ inch
- Repair pavers offset by more than ¼ inch above/below adjacent units.
- Replace broken units that impair the structural integrity of the surface.
- Replenish aggregate joint materials as needed after sweeper vacuum. It is important that the proper sized joint material is used and is not placed over joints clogged pores.
- Check drain outfalls for free flow of water
- Check outflow from the observation well annually if one was designed in the pavement.
