Customer Spotlight: Permeable Paving Powered By Strol

You’ve done it! The house is built, all the trucks and servicemen are gone. Proud of your new home, you stand back to admire all the hard work, and you realise there’s still all the landscaping to go. Thankfully, there’s no need to feel overwhelmed. Strol has you covered, as Phillip found out when he was looking for a permeable solution to creating a new driveway.

Why go permeable instead of traditional asphalt or concrete?

As their property is nestled into the hills, they often get a lot of rain. Historically, the area was prone to flooding, so Phillip was quite conscious of finding the right system to help with the local conditions of where they lived. Running from the road alongside a creek before cresting the hill to the family home, Phillip and his family wanted a large driveway that could be driven over by utes. They also had other sheds, properties and access paths leading from the top of the driveway by the road, so they needed a driveway solution that was not only robust, but for a large amount of traffic use.

“With such a big catchment area, we also wanted something that would slow down all the water pouring into the storm water drains and creek when it rained.”

With traditional hard surfaces, excess rainwater has nowhere to go but straight into the surrounding environment. It can overwhelm gardens and drains, and the high flow rate picks up soil and debris, scouring out land while dumping that sediment into gardens, local rivers or stormwater systems.

Permeable pavers:

Reduce water flow
Allow water to seep evenly into the surrounding environment
Prevent scouring and erosion
Help direct clean water into drainage systems

Create a natural look with permeable paving.

Being a country property, Phillip wanted to keep that natural feel. “We’ve got lots of big trees, the creek running nearby. We didn’t want a big slab of concrete ruining that feel. We chose to go with a decorative stone driveway. It suits the style of our house, and we love the sound of driving on pebbles when we come home.”

With a variety of permeable paving products, you can create your own look to seamlessly blend your aesthetic landscape with functional needs. Whether it’s a grassed driveway or if you’re just looking to stabilise your lawn, a pebbled pathway, patio or driveway, or even a gravel access road or hard stand parking area for utes, boats or caravans, Strol permeable pavers offer a range of options that lie just under the surface to support your chosen material all year round.

“Pebbles gave us a softer look. The colours blend in well, especially with the autumn leaves, and it will be easy to carry that theme on when we do the pathways around the house.”

Are permeable pavers easy to install and maintain?

Permeable paving works best when used in conjunction with a geotextile, such as SureTex. Once your path, patio or driveway is cut back to the bare subsoil layer and rolled or flattened, by placing a layer of SureTex reinforcement geotextile, you separate the harder aggregate and stones from the softer soil layers. SureTex will allow water to pass through at a more controlled rate, preventing scouring, but if any soil areas do collapse, SureTex’s engineered design supports the upper layers. Without SureTex, the drainage aggregate underneath the permeable pavers will get pushed into the soft soil, creating ruts and dips.

You can lay permeable paving in five simple stages.

Cut back your desired area you want to pave, removing all roots and rocks.
Lay SureTex geotextile and pin it in place.
Cover the area in a layer of drainage aggregate and another of crusher dust.
Place the permeable pavers on top and clip them together, pinning them down so they don’t move.
Then just fill the paving surface with your desired material, hoggin, pebbles or decorative chip.

It’s the combination of SureTex and the permeable pavers that will always keep your paved area stable and flat.

“We did it in a day,” Phillip says. “My kids pitched in, we had a digger to help level the ground and spread out the aggregate and stones, but by dinner time we had the entire driveway laid down with pavers and filled with stones.”

By correctly installing with aggregates and geotextile underneath, maintenance is just a matter of sweeping the odd stone back in place. The pavers keep the surface area stable and flat, so tires don’t create rut marks and potholes don’t form.“ It’ll add years to the lifespan of our driveway, which is another reason why we went with permeable paving.” The robust design also means no rutting where cars leave the road and turn onto the driveway. “It’s the area that gets the hardest use,” Phillip says, “but every now and then, all we do is rake any stray stones back to cover the pavers.”

The benefits of permeable paving

Create natural, long-lasting and environmentally responsible paved surfaces with permeable paving, and rest assured that you’ll never have to deal with cracked concrete or rutted grass or asphalt again.