Underground tanks for civil infrastructure
For road, rail, port and airport pavements, the need for surface water management requires careful planning with an emphasis on:
- Minimising earthworks and pipework.
- Utilising existing pavement levels and drainage infrastructure.
- Integrating other water management requirements, for example OSD, rainwater harvesting and other WSUD initiatives.
However, alongside these transportation ports and corridors, downstream stormwater infrastructure can be very limited, so designers need to deal with water ‘at the source’.
Underground stormwater tanks can offer a means to store stormwater so it can be released or ‘infiltrated’ in a controlled manner back into the water table or ‘retained’ for a specific purpose – irrigation, fire protection etc… If downstream infrastructure exists, then they can be used as part of a stormwater ‘detention’ system.
Typical uses can include
- sediment bays for infiltration applications
- silt traps for retention and detention applications
- retention and detention for light to medium duty applications
- retention and detention for heavy duty applications
For these applications, tanks are installed adjacent to these structural pavements in areas that are transitioned into softscape surrounds in close proximity to busy operations. Therefore, they can be in load bearing soils and trafficked by occasional or accidental loads. This means strength is as critical to tank’s design as hydraulics and maintenance.
ACO worldwide has been manufacturing Stormwater tanks for these civil engineering applications for a number of years.
Projects of note:
