Surface water management
The surface water management train starts with prevention, or good housekeeping measures, for individual premises; and progresses through local source controls to larger downstream site and regional controls.
Run off need not pass through all the stages of the management train. It could flow straight to a site control but as a general principle it is better to deal with run off locally, returning the water to the natural drainage system as near to the source as possible.
Only if the water cannot be managed on site should it be conveyed elsewhere. This may be due to the water requiring additional treatment before disposal or the quantities of run off generated being greater than the capacity of the natural drainage system at that point.
The design of SuDS requires active decisions between different options, often depending on the risks associated with each course of action. The risks of an area flooding have to be balanced with the costs of protecting the area from different levels of floods.
The management train concept promotes division of the area to be drained into sub-catchments with different drainage characteristics and land uses, each with its own drainage strategy. Dealing with the water locally not only reduces the quantity that has to be managed at any one point, but also reduces the need for conveying the water off the site.
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Where does TarmacDry fit into the surface water management train?
TarmacDry SuDS systems are generally based upon achieving source control as locally as possible with the aim of negating the requirement for additional treatment techniques.
Asphalt based porous pavements have been successfully installed and monitored for more than 40 years inthe USA and throughout mainland Europe to demonstrate their performance in terms of effectivewater management.
Here in the UK Tarmac have been developing porous asphalt paving technology since 1997. Since then the technology has evolved considerably and has been thoroughly tested by independent bodies such as TRL Ltd and Coventry University and used in a number of commercial schemes.
