No joints in the frontage
One continuous pour instead of hundreds of units, so nothing sinks, lips, spreads or sprouts weeds along the driveway line.
Permeable Paving Melbourne
Permeable Paving in Melbourne, Poured as One Piece
Driveways, courtyards, side paths and street frontages across Melbourne, in a surface the rain goes straight through. We make it at our Mitcham factory and place it ourselves, so there are no pallets to lay, no joints to sand and nothing to lift over the years.
For the front of a Melbourne house
The jobs we do most around Melbourne are domestic and visible. A driveway between the street and a garage. A courtyard behind a single-fronted terrace where there is nowhere for the rain to go. The strip of frontage on a heritage street where the council will not allow more sealed surface. A path down the side of a townhouse development where five units share the drainage.
All of them work better as one continuous pour than as pieces. Permeable paving in the segmental sense drains through the joints between units, and joints are also where things go wrong: silt packs in, sand washes out, weeds appear, and one unit settles a few millimetres and starts catching the wheel. A poured surface has 20 to 26 per cent voids running through the material itself, so it takes 130 to 170 litres per minute per square metre across the whole area with nothing to maintain between the pieces.
We make it locally, at Factory 7, 25 to 39 Cook Road, Mitcham, with 7 mm Victorian aggregate that gives a finer surface texture than the 10 mm mixes used in the other states. That texture reads well against brick, bluestone and render, and it is available in charcoal and other oxide colours, or in our Ultracon finishes for a premium frontage.
Where the water goes
The surface takes in 130 to 170 litres of rain per minute, per square metre, through voids that run through the material itself, 20 to 26 per cent of the slab by volume. Independent testing on a VicRoads project measured 9,400 millimetres per hour.
Below the slab, an open-graded stone base stores the water and lets it soak or release at a controlled rate, holding 28 to 56 litres per square metre inside the system.
Will it work at my place?
Check if permeable concrete suits your site
A few quick questions about your site. You get a straight answer about whether permeable concrete is the right call, including when it isn't, before anyone asks for your details.
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Tell us about your project
Get in touch today to discuss your project. We're here to help with all your permeable concrete requirements, from a single driveway to major civil infrastructure.
📞Call us1300 010 499✉️Email us[email protected]
📍Head officeFactory 7, 25-39 Cook Road, Mitcham VIC 3132
The finish, poured
What Melbourne homeowners get from it
The whole surface drains
130 to 170 litres per minute per square metre through the material, not through a narrow band of joint stone.
Made in Mitcham
Designed, batched and quality-controlled at our own Victorian factory using 7 mm local aggregate, and placed by our own crews.
Helps with council permeability
A fully permeable surface that supports permeable-area targets on new dwellings, second dwellings and extensions.
Works over street trees
Water and air still reach the root zone, which is why it is one of the few surfaces accepted inside a tree protection zone.
Finished to suit the house
Exposed aggregate texture with charcoal and other oxide colour options, plus the Ultracon range for premium frontages.
Common questions
My courtyard is tiny and the truck cannot get near it. Can you still do it?+
Usually, but access is the honest constraint and we check it before quoting. Small inner-suburban courtyards with a single side gate are the jobs where a poured surface is hardest to justify, and where segmental units or a resin-bound surface can genuinely be the better call. Our estimator will look at the access and tell you which way to go rather than force the pour.
I am building a second dwelling in the backyard. Does this help my permit?+
It often does. A permeable surface counts toward council permeability targets and carries its own detention, with an open-graded base holding 28 to 56 litres of water per square metre and a system runoff coefficient around 0.3. On tight Melbourne blocks that can be the difference between fitting the plan under the impervious-area cap and redesigning. Confirm the required percentage with your council, and we will supply the surface figures.
There is a big street tree between my kerb and my garage. Will the council let me pave over it?+
A sealed slab over a root plate is generally refused, and rightly so. A permeable surface passes water and air through to the roots, so it is one of the few pavements allowed within a tree protection zone, subject to your council arborist and the construction method they require. We have built plenty of driveways around protected trees and can work to an arborist's conditions.
How does it look next to bluestone or old brick?+
The finish is an exposed aggregate texture rather than a smooth trowelled slab, using 7 mm Victorian stone, which sits comfortably against period materials. Charcoal is the most requested colour on inner-suburban frontages. If you want something more refined for the front of the house, the Ultracon range gives a premium finish with the same drainage behaviour.
What maintenance will I actually do?+
Very little, and nothing seasonal. Keep the leaf litter off it and give it an occasional vacuum sweep, particularly if you are under deciduous trees. Do not let a garden bed wash soil across the surface, because silt is the one thing that slows it down. If it has been neglected, a pressure wash followed by vacuuming brings most of the infiltration back. Never run a rotary broom over it.
Permeable paving, the poured version
In most Melbourne quotes, permeable paving means segmental units: concrete pavers laid with widened joints, or plastic grids filled with gravel or turf. Water drains through the gaps into a stone base. It is a valid system and it is not what we sell. We make poured permeable concrete, a no-fines cementitious pavement with 20 to 26 per cent interconnected voids through the material itself, placed as one continuous surface with no units and no joints.
The practical difference on a residential frontage is that our whole area takes water rather than a small percentage of it, and that nothing in the surface can move independently. Infiltration is 130 to 170 litres per minute per square metre, measured at 9,400 millimetres per hour under VicRoads testing. Trafficable mixes run 20 to 25 MPa to AS 3727.1 with a P4 slip rating and a 30 year plus design life.
Melbourne homes, Melbourne conditions
Two things shape residential work here. First, the ground: much of the eastern and northern suburbs is reactive clay that will not infiltrate at a useful rate, so we design the open-graded base as a storage reservoir holding 28 to 56 litres per square metre and either infiltrate on subgrades of CBR 5 and above, or line the base and discharge slowly where the clay will not take it. Second, the blocks: Melbourne lots are getting tighter, driveways longer and gardens smaller, so the driveway is often the largest single impervious surface on a property and the easiest one to change.
The rainfall pattern rewards this. Melbourne delivers long runs of light falls, then an intense summer cell that arrives all at once. Light rain never gets a chance to sheet across the surface, and the heavy cell goes into a base built to hold it rather than into the street drain in one surge.
Where we pour it around Melbourne
Driveways from the crossover to the garage, including around protected street trees. Courtyards and rear yards on subdivided blocks. Side paths and clothesline areas where a sealed slab would create a puddle against the fence. Street frontages and nature strip treatments where the council limits sealed surface. Pool surrounds, where drainage and the P4 slip rating both count. Shared driveways and forecourts on small townhouse developments, where several dwellings drain to one point and a detention tank would otherwise be needed.
Local manufacture, local crews
The material is designed and made at our Mitcham factory and installed by our own crews under ISO 9001, 14001 and 45001 certification, and we are Master Builders Victoria members. That single line of responsibility is the difference between a mix that is right for your ground and a generic product placed by whoever won the subcontract. Across thirty years we have installed more than 85,000 square metres of permeable concrete, and our crews place 500 square metres and more per day, so a typical Melbourne driveway is one pour and one visit.
Book a Melbourne estimator to look at your frontage
We come out, check the falls, the soil and the access, and give you a real figure for a poured permeable driveway or courtyard. If the access is too tight to pour, we will tell you that too. Call 1300 010 499 or book a free on-site assessment.