ETNASLA Meeting with Xeripave (01.29.2015)

I attended an ETNASLA lunch-and-learn at the Knoxville Botanical Gardens. It was my first ASLA meeting so it was pretty exciting. We conducted the meeting minutes and then received a presentation from Xeripave, a company that makes pervious pavers. Although the presentation was very thorough, I had mixed feelings about the product itself and I’m not sure that it is something I would want to use in projects as a Landscape Architect, but I appreciated the idea of the product and the filtration potential of stormwater. They showed us examples, such as a alleyway in Chicago that their pavers were utilized in, and projects like that seemed to have higher feasibility and potential than some of the more expansive projects, such as parking lots. I do feel that over the next few years, they will be able to refine this project further and therefore have more opportunities to use more local materials.

The product itself is relatively new and although it has undergone extensive testing, I don’t know if it has been tested by time enough to prove its effectiveness. I and others also were not completely enthusiastic about the fact that the pavers are shipped from the Pacific Northwest, as we don’t seem to have an equivalent locally (which is just not feasibly as sustainable as it could be.) From an alternate perspective, the cost is expensive ($25 sq. ft.) but that includes installation. The low-maintenance aspect of the pavers is probably its strongest point-- they felt confident it would last up to twenty years and replacement would be extremely easy.