Paving - The Future
The idea of laying blocks on a flexible surface and jointing with a flexible material is not a new technology, indeed it can be traced back to Roman times. The Romans recognised the importance of using local materials cut neatly to fit together, to provide a workable surface. Even back in Roman times, they recognised the importance of investment in road building providing a workable and aesthetically pleasing environment as a method of generating and encouraging wealth and inward investment in an area.
As technology has evolved there has been a natural progression to using concrete products as a dimensionally accurate and cost effective solution, providing both aesthetically pleasing and durable paving solutions. Concrete paving products have been in production in Ireland for close on 30 years, initially produced in plain uninspiring colours. From a standing start, the industry today manufactures in excess of 3 million m² of block paving, add to this a large market for concrete flag paving, both in a wide variety of finishes, depths and plan sizes and the industry can offer solutions for all design applications.
At Acheson Glover we produce an ever expanding range of Hard Landscaping product, providing the industry with a wide colour palette, multiple sizes, and various secondary surface treatments. Products such as TerraPave Country cobble, TerraPave Boulevard, and TerraPave Natural Aggregate flags are regarded as industry leaders in their field, especially the innovative use of Natural aggregates to provide cost effective alternatives to Natural Stone for both paving and flag products. For prestige projects, an ever expanding range of Natural stone products are being made available to provide designers with extensive design options.
As part of the overall initiative towards Sustainable Construction techniques, the paving industry has devised a “Permeable Paving System” which falls neatly into the area of SuDS (Sustainable Drainage Systems). Acheson Glover provides an Engineers Indemnified system of Infiltrating or Attenuating storm water within the block pavement sub-base designed to deal with storm rainfall conditions.
The industry has been very aware of the need to integrate both the vertical and horizontal planes and complementary colours and textures are provided for the vertical plane by the extensive range of Anchor Dry build retaining wall products As labour has become more and more difficult to obtain and to pay, Anchor systems have led the way with by providing systems for constructing retaining walls which are simple and cost effective to construct.
