permaculture

["Harold Waldock" <hwaldock@yahoo.ca>]

I know of two opportunities:
1) There is a porous asphalt much used in Mexico that allows water to
perculate through it.  I'm not sure it is 
2) Grass Crete: Like breeze blocks but laid on the side. The grass grows
through it and it does not suffer from frost.  It can be made to sit flat
and is used for fire truck access in multi family dewelling complexes. Lance
Thompson at enviroscape@telus.net showed a picture of it to me at a workshop
recently.  

He also showed examples of parking lot/swale combo at schools and
institutions here in wet, occasionally snowy Vancouver BC Canada.

At my local community swimming pool, they put the ground source heat pump
pipes in the soil beneith the parking lot - If you can't avoid it make much
use of it. Other dual uses that come to mind are tennis courts, roller
hockey, volley ball and basket ball.



Harold Waldock



-----Original Message-----
From: permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:permaculture-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org]On Behalf Of mIEKAL aND
Sent: March 19, 2004 2:41 PM
To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
Subject: [permaculture] Durable alternative to asphalt?


I'm working on the permaculture & landscape design to a new 40 acre 
campus being built by Organic Valley.  We're putting in employee 
gardens, 5 acres of prairie, edible landscaping in the parking lots, & 
hopefully a 20 acre demonstration farm in the future.  Also in the 
design is an iniative to keep the whole place certified organically 
since that's the benchmark of the industry we're in.  The biggest 
disappointment with the process so far is that they are having a 250 
car parking lot complete with the asphalt.  None of the alternatives 
that have been looked into so far will hold up to a lot of freezing & 
thawing & in some years a lot of snow plowing.  Anyone have any 
experience in a northern clime with something other than gravel, 
asphalt, & these permeable tiles which shift around & would make it 
hard for snow plowing?

mIEKAL

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