For over five years, Minnesota cities including Minneapolis and Richfield have been testing pervious concrete on parking lots and other hard surfaces in hopes of better storm water management. However, Shoreview, MN went the extra mile by replacing a storm drainage system with new pervious concrete pavement.
The Shoreview project includes the reconstruction of five streets in the Woodbridge Neighborhood totaling about one mile of pervious concrete streets. The Woodbridge Neighborhood is located in the Northeast corner of Lake Owasso.
Cemstone, a leader in high performance concrete in the Midwest, engineered and supplied the 1,800 cubic yards of pervious concrete for this project. The pervious concrete was paved seven inches thick and twenty one feet wide between two surmountable curbs. The pervious concrete was placed over eighteen inches of crushed aggregate base which will allow the storm water to drain through the pervious concrete and filter through the aggregate before re-entering the soil beneath.
Right paver for pervious
With a total estimated cost of one million dollars, the city of Shoreview needed an experienced contractor to complete this project. The job was awarded to North Country Concrete of Ramsey, Minnesota. North Country Concrete is one of the most experienced pervious concrete contractors in the area. "We have more than fifteen pervious projects under our belt but this is by far our largest effort to date," said Karl Virkus, President of North Country Concrete.
To ensure the project was a success, North Country Concrete knew that they would not be able to provide a durable pervious pavement without the right equipment. North Country Concrete decided to use an Allen Model 255CD Triple Roller Tube Paver manufactured by Allen Engineering Corp. in Paragould, Arkansas. Allen Engineering Corporation is one of the leading manufacturers of pervious concrete paving equipment.
The Allen Triple Roller Tube Paver was set up to pave the full width streets in one pass. The paver has a strike-off tube that continuously pushes the excess concrete in front of the machine and two full length drive roller tubes that compact the concrete. The strike-off tube has a vertical adjustment which was set at 3/4" above finish grade. "By raising the tube up 3/4", we are able to get three to four times the compaction with this machine compared to conventional single tube roller screeds," said Virkus. He also added "with this increased amount of compaction we increase the durability of the pavement dramatically."
