Civils question

[ChevronB19]

Pic from local website referring to the restoration of our city centre. I’m curious as to what these black plastic things are? My best guess given the semicircular profile at the base is that they are some form of pipe/utility support, others have suggested possibly a guide for tree roots.

Anyone have a definitive answer? Sorry but couldn’t find a more appropriate sub forum than here.

[iphonedyou]

They are attenuation crates.

[eps]

A quick Google image search indicates that they are RootSpace 600 - so used for trees, small/shorter ones I guess.

https://greenblue.com/gb/products/rootspace/

your image is from this article - which affirms this as well https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/25277648.work-o...

Who knew? I was going to say that it was definitely not for tree roots - but it is!! Seems stupid in a way - let's lob a load of plastic in the ground for trees... Hmmm.. There must be better ways, but I guess the plastic ends up being the easy and simple solution.

[ChevronB19]

Brilliant, thanks eps!

Edit: in my defence, the article seems to have been updated, as it didn’t originally say ‘tree pits’ oops

Edited by ChevronB19 on Tuesday 1st July 10:44

[iphonedyou]

eps said:

A quick Google image search indicates that they are RootSpace 600 - so used for trees, small/shorter ones I guess.

https://greenblue.com/gb/products/rootspace/

your image is from this article - which affirms this as well https://www.newsandstar.co.uk/news/25277648.work-o...

Who knew? I was going to say that it was definitely not for tree roots - but it is!! Seems stupid in a way - let's lob a load of plastic in the ground for trees... Hmmm.. There must be better ways, but I guess the plastic ends up being the easy and simple solution.

It's really sensible; in this application the soil is retained within the plastic and with its structure intact its capable of attenuating thousands of litres of storm run-off.