Grasscrete car park - permeable and sustainable grass cover with built-in SuDS

For architects looking for an extension of the green envelope, turning the car parking areas of any building development, commercial or housing development, into a sustainable green car park provides the perfect combination of green vista with proven SuDS performance.

The permeability features of Grasscrete grass paving directly address SuDS issues. Hard landscaped areas can often provide high volumes of rain run-off into the sewer network especially during heavy flash floods. A more permeable grass paving mitigates surface water run-off and its implications for the local storm water network.

Grass Concrete offers two types of system, Grasscrete and Grassblock. Larger projects favour cast-on site concrete pour to produce Grasscrete. Smaller installations often consider Grassblock, easy to install precast blocks. Both systems are ready to be infilled with top-soil and appropriate grass seeds to suit the environment.

One of Britain’s top Rugby Union team Saracens FC called for a new car park to be constructed it came with a need to fully complete within the 3-month period between seasons. Leaving just 6 weeks for the Grasscrete installation.

Ahead of construction the project came with several additional requirements; the need to incorporate an aisle of EV charging points and to provide for heavy plant and vehicle access to Phase 2 of the project.

With the majority of the area designated for car parking the 76mm thick Grasscrete GC3 was selected for traffic up to 4.3 tonnes. Here spectator movement was aided by walkways defined by gravel infill in lieu of topsoil and grass.

Access to the future phase 2 area was achieved by a link road within the car park that was upgraded to the 150mm GC2 system, which enabled 40 tonne vehicle loads.

This Phase 2 included a new Outside Broadcast hardstanding area again using the heavyweight GC2 system, followed by a further 2 phases of installation to extend the GC3 parking areas from the original phase.

Now fully operational these large areas of Grasscrete, provide the ideal combination of engineering performance together within a naturally grassed landscape.

To find out more about Grass Concrete click here.