Do you ever do studies on soil microbes for different areas / climates for different applications? I ask because our cities still have a lot of work to do regarding storm water management and instead of using conduits to flow straight to river, lake, or stream, we could be doing more systems like shown here. Depending on the types of run off different types of microbes in the soil below these storm water channels could be used to help digest and treat different types of pollutants in the storm water runoff. I would think studies could be done over time and take samples below these systems to see what is going on. Maybe you don’t share all of what the microbes could treat but some could be used to digest petroleum and or other types of more complex pollutants that we would ideally not want going in lakes or rivers, and not taxing sanitary waste treatment facilities either, because as we know, those systems can not treat everything that comes into it such as pharmaceuticals and other miscellaneous chemicals. Near agg areas those bugs could potentially have an affinity to whatever types of fertilizers they may be using, and or misc animal waste. Another question I wondered about is how often these clog up w/ leaves or misc trash and if that causes a political barrier for municipalities to switch to this kind of model? On a related note to leaves, sticks, garbage, or erosions from above potentially flowing into these culverts and thus causing potential pooling of water and or “blockages”, do you take that as a variable in your calculations? It would be a chat because the amount of debris may not nessesariou correlate with season rains - for example more construction can happen in summer than winter. Do engineers try to do flow calculations based on those “pooling” variables (that may or may not occur except leaves and pinecones for certain dots), to try to get enough momentum to push through that, given the other variable such as slope of land, size and height of the concrete mounds, etc?
Regarding point at 19:57 where installers added concrete and now vegetation not growing. Have you gone out there with a hammer drill and medium to larger concrete drill bit? I’m new to construction but an ex enginerd who’s been working busy cutting up asphalt & concrete block for a huge driveway I’ve been building, so my kids can have a school bus again by using OUR driveway (cuz our City & developers messed up - removed the only area large enough for a school bus to turn around, which it had used past 25+ yrs!). Because I’ve had to figure out how to pin down commercial grids through 2-3” angular rock, and wanted to drill through parts of the main City road lol, I’ve been trying out different tools, blades, and drill bits to get the job done! I also have had to drill through our cheap concrete block house lately for multiple reasons and have noticed depending on what is used and technique, the hole can be nice and straight or be a crumbly mess (my husband did those lol!). But my hammer drill and a good concrete / masonry bit has worked great and sometimes like on road it can help if some pressure is allied surrounding the hole (I think it helps w the vibration and reduces some of the shear stress and it seems to help to counter any stresses caused by the friction on the drill bit moving material every which way. If I had a thick rubber workout mat i would try to put pressure on the surface area near the hole being drilled (they probably make stuff for this purpose that one could probably even “drill into” like a template. You guys probably know all of this stuff - just sharing my own observations via trial and error and learning on my own. But just a thought so that you guys could put holes in the concrete where you needed so you could then place seeds and a little soil there to grow, like a “reborn” chia pet! PS If it was near Vancouver WA or Portland OR area I’d volunteer to do it. I’m enjoying learning and have an interest in this kind of work (besides my chem engineering degree I have a minor in environmental engineering and a 2nd BS degree in Environmental Science, but when I was in that program we never learned about any of these cool products or solutions! So I’m really loving to learn about all these new innovations and see the real life applications!). BTW I love how he is pointing out the areas that were less than perfect installs - this is where im learning the MOST! But, i also used to be a defect / in-line-monitoring yield engineer in high tech manufacturing so that’s how my brain is wired! 😉 Thanks for the awesome info! I can see how we need this product on WA Stare highway 14 That is directly above a public walking trail and across the street from our house. It would also be a great solution for our 4 plex adjacent to our house where there is a large dipped area paralleling the narrow neighborhood Main Street (highway 14 parallel to it at about 8ft higher elevation). Our street doesn’t have any storm drain system so if we don’t want a lot of water in front of our house we need to make our own system even though the City technically owns that stretch of land. Sorry about the run on sentences - too many thoughts and applications going through my head! potential Depending on the concrete, on our street Kind of pin or hold down Hold down the concrete block
