When The Department of Energy and Green Builder Media teamed up to give a glamorous 1963 mid-century modern home in Las Vegas a sustainability “facelift”, FilterPave was the Eco-Elegant xeriscaping pavement of choice.
Las Vegas is doubly blessed. Arguably Ground Zero for the U.S. housing and foreclosure crisis, it is also the national Poster Child for an increasingly scarce supply of fresh water. When the Department of Energy and Green Builder Media presented possible strategies for combating both with their 2010 Revision Las Vegas retrofit demonstration project, FilterPave was selected as the eco-elegant porous pavement of choice.
The project focused on transforming a mid-20th century modern architectural relic into an example of present day best practices in sustainable remodeling.
The existing hardscaping told a hard scrabble story. It was clear that time, temperature and climate had not been a friend to the original circular concrete driveway. It was cracking and crumbling from years of expansion and contraction caused by the dessert’s beating sun and dramatically cooler dessert nights. Over the years stormwater had runoff the impervious concrete surface, eroding the underlying foundations.
In addition to selecting native plants that needed no extra irrigation, the landscape designer for the project, Bill Bennett, opted for a straight drive into the carport and a wide set of FilterPave pervious and temperature-flexing steps, driveway and walking paths instead. To echo the mid-century architectural them, Bennet designed a cubic patterns using the pour-in-place FilterPave to reflect the geometric detailing of the home.
Since 2010, the FilterPave pervious paving system installed there continues to allow stormwater to trickle back into the ground with no signs of erosion, cracking or gullies.
Two types of FilterPave were selected for the project—FILTERPAVE®, Glass Series in Sapphire Blue, which complimented the home’s turquoise color palette, and the FilterPave Stone series using a 3/4 inch granite aggregate, used in a checkerboard pattern in tandem with squares of draught resistant grass.
The result: All who visit feel welcomed home, including the precious desert rain.