[GBlist] grassy pavers

[William Revelle <wr@revelle.net>]

Dear list members,

Our house is progressing.  PV roofing slates from Atlantis Energy 
should be installed next week, insulation is going in this week, the 
solar hot water system soon after that.  With the help of this list 
we tracked down someone to take the wood construction waste we were 
producing (our builder was delighted, not only were we able to 
recycle the wood, the cost was less).

The question for tonight is the relative merits of various types of 
grassy pavers.  We want to minimize the water runoff from our 
driveway and are planning on using grassy pavers to let the water 
drain into the soil.  We have seen concrete pavers with large holes 
for grass in Europe and a few sites in the states.  The ones we have 
seen seem to work pretty well for the low level of traffic we expect. 
(We mainly walk or ride bikes.)  We have also been shown plastic 
pavers made from recycled plastic here in the states.  They seem to 
have a greater percentage of open surface for grass than do the 
concrete pavers. They seem a little less solid and less comfortable 
to walk on. We have not yet seen any working examples. Does anyone on 
the list have experience with either kind of grassy paver?

Questions we are worrying about include:
a) how well does the grass actually grow inside the paver?
b) how does one deal with snow removal (other than setting the 
snowplow blade up a few inches)?
c) which is more comfortable when walking on them with bare feet?
d) What other problems we have not thought of yet?

Thanks.

Bill

-- 
William Revelle			http://revelle.net/revelle.html
2302 Orrington Avenue
Evanston, Illinois
Building a carbon neutral house		http://revelle.net/lakeside/energy.html

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