Concrete, from now on also a blessing for rain

Few building materials are as widespread as concrete. Concrete is all around us in buildings, pavements and paving. However, it is often blamed as being impervious, thus bad for stormwater infiltration. The consideration that every square meter of concrete was one less square meter of green space also played a part. This was more than enough reason for Philippe Segers, CEO of Eurodal, to look for new, sustainable solutions with concrete. Smart use of water, greenery, paving and space was the common thread here.

From problems to new opportunities

Together with several external companies and research institutes, Eurodal, manufacturer of concrete slabs and floor plates, stamped the B’RAIN partnership out of the ground. They sought, and found, a completely sustainable application of concrete that fits perfectly within caring for water, greenery, space and paving. More so, concrete can from now on actively contribute to the collection, infiltration and reuse of stormwater and to more and better greenery in cities. Thus the old problems were transformed into new opportunities.

Innovative applications

The partners of the B’RAIN partnership, in particular Eurodal, Beton De Bonte and Tree Builders joined forces to devise a new, sustainable and future-oriented system in which concrete plays the leading role and in which, as separate, individual companies, they could not immediately provide a comprehensive answer.

The system itself is based on a three-layer, vertical zoning that consists of the concrete pavement itself, cutouts in the pavement for trees and plantings and space under the concrete for water.

One concrete application of this, Vélonet, allows existing canals or newly dug trenches to be covered with concrete and a bike path built on top. Open channels are placed in the trenches with slugs into which rainwater can penetrate. The compartmentalization of communicating chambers allows application on slopes. Provisions for utility lines will also be installed in the trenches. All this not only saves scarce space, it also avoids costly and time-consuming expropriations.

Another application is found in the paving of large public surfaces such as city squares, parking lots or school playgrounds. Stormwater collection and drainage can also be provided here, combined with cutouts for greenery. Eurodal’s “Hydrops 3.0” provides interconnected concrete chambers under the pavement where water is stripped of silt and slowly released to the subsurface. Some of the treated water is released to trees and plantings.

Greener cities

Trees in the cityscape present another challenge. Compaction of the subsurface causes their roots to seek water and oxygen at the surface, often pushing up and damaging the surrounding pavement, which in turn leads to additional costs. The solution to this is to install tree bunkers in the concrete pavement.

They provide underground solid root ball anchoring, tree root guidance, irrigation facilities and deep aeration. This eliminates harmful root pressure and allows the trees to grow healthily in ideal conditions. In any case, this is as ingenious as it is simple an answer to global warming, which is putting increasing pressure on the health of urban trees. Our cities can only get greener for it.

Eurodal presents these sustainable and future-oriented solutions in their own inspiration park with demo-zone in Grobbendonk.