Permeable concrete in Northern Territory

Permeable concrete in Darwin: built for the wet

Darwin doesn't get a wet season so much as it gets four months of one. Most of the year's rain lands between November and March, often in bursts you could time with a watch. Run that onto a sealed driveway or car park and you get a sheet of water at the height of the storm, then a puddle sitting at the roller door for the rest of the hour.

Permeable concrete in Darwin takes the surface out of that equation. Rain passes straight through the Permcon slab at 8,000 to 10,000 mm/hr, into a bed of clean screenings underneath. That bed stores the water, lets it soak into the ground, or releases it through an under-drain at a controlled rate.

There's a second effect worth knowing about. A dense, dark driveway holds the day's heat well into the evening.

Soils and the watertable

Territory ground varies more than people expect: lateritic gravel in one suburb, tight clay two streets over. Once the wet sets in, the watertable can rise fast. Where the ground takes water, we let the base soak it away. Where it doesn't, or the groundwater's sitting high, the base stores the water instead and releases it at a controlled rate. The finished surface looks the same either way; what's underneath is decided from the site, never from a rule of thumb.

What we do in the Northern Territory

We pour permeable concrete for driveways across Darwin and the wider Territory. See the driveways page for detail. We also pour car parks and hardstands on commercial properties, and paths and pool surrounds too.

The mix runs on 10 mm aggregate, and the standard slab is 125 mm thick. Larger car parks and anything carrying heavier vehicles go thicker again. It's one continuous pour with no joints, in plain grey, charcoal, soapstone or sandstone. Engineers after the base storage, void content and loading figures will find them on our technical data page.

How a Territory job runs

Every NT job gets quoted after a site visit, because ground, access and wet-season timing all change the answer. Send us the address, the area, and what the site actually does in a downpour. Our NT estimator calls you back, asks the questions that matter, then comes out to look before anything's priced.

What you get back is a real figure for slab and base together, plus an honest word on when we can pour. Crews and materials get scheduled around the wet, so that date matters. The work carries a 10-year structural warranty.

Planning a permeable driveway in the Northern Territory, or a car park that has to cope with the wet? Send us the details and the NT team will call you back.