How to stop heavy rain becoming a flood
A world-first water management solution is helping protect the people of Schimmert in the Netherlands from annual flooding
Increasingly, people living in the small village of Schimmert face heavy downpours each year that lead to serious flooding. Because the sewer system cannot drain away the volume of water from this extreme rainfall quickly enough, roads, houses and garages are inundated. This is unpleasant, unhygienic and expensive for the village and its residents.
In a world-first project, we used the water-absorbent properties of stone wool to create and install a water management system underneath the playground of a local school. Using around 550m3 of Lapinus water management solutions, it’s the first ever project on this scale. The specially designed stone wool slabs can absorb up to 95 percent of their own volume in water, so they act as a buffer for extreme rainfall, collecting it and then gradually releasing the water into the sewer at a rate the system can cope with. Within 24 hours, the buffer – big enough to manage a “once in a hundred years” rainfall event – is ready to take on the next big downpour.
With a long service life, this stone wool solution will help protect Schimmert’s people and their property from extreme weather for many years to come.
Project location
Schimmert, Netherlands
