Permeable concrete in South Australia

Where permeable concrete works hardest in Adelaide: infill blocks over clay

Split an established Adelaide block into two titles, and you double the roof area and the paving without changing what's underneath: the same reactive clay that swells when it's wet, shrinks when it's dry, and never took water fast to begin with.

The slab handles the traffic. The base underneath, a bed of clean screenings under the Permcon surface, handles the storm. Every 100 mm of it holds 28 litres per square metre at 85 per cent design capacity, and on a clay site that storage is doing most of the work: soaking away over the hours after rain where the clay allows it, or bleeding out through an under-drain at a controlled rate to the stormwater connection where it doesn't. The surface above stays clear either way. No puddles across the driveway, no sheet flow to the street, nothing backing up under the garage door.

Reading the ground before we draw anything

We size the base to the site's storage need first, then work out how much of that job the clay itself is willing to do. On tight infill clay it does almost none of it, so the base and under-drain carry the lot. Either way, the driveway you park on looks the same. We're always happy to look and review, and go through it with a client. A site with no infiltration at all isn't a reason to rule this out; it's a reason to size the base properly.

What the SA team pours, beyond driveways

Water Sensitive SA guidance already counts permeable paving as a stormwater asset. That logic runs through car parks, footpaths, shared paths and paving as much as it runs through driveways. Car parks for commercial and community sites usually arrive with a stormwater condition attached to the permit. Footpaths and paving around retained trees carry a different job again: the roots underneath still need air and water moving through the ground, and a sealed slab starves them of both. For the standard driveway work, the mix runs 10 mm aggregate over a 125 mm slab, poured continuous with no joints to lift or grow weeds, in plain grey, charcoal, soapstone or sandstone.

Engineers get the same numbers we design from: base storage volumes, void content, the loading chart, all sitting on the technical data page.

Getting a figure

That's how most permeable concrete Adelaide jobs start: tell us the address, the area and the job the surface has to do, and an estimator from the SA team calls you back. They'll ask about fall, access, what the ground's currently carrying, and where the stormwater connection runs, then come out to see it in person. What you get back is one number for the slab and the base together, backed by a 10-year structural warranty once the crews pour it. Send the details through and the SA team will be in touch.