I heard a story on NPR the other day and I looked up the product that was the subject of the story.
It is called EcoCreto (A Spanish speaking group invented the stuff hence the “creto” which would be “crete” in English or EcoCrete) and it is pervious concrete.
Pervious: Water runs right through it and yet the stuff is as hard as regular concrete. Who knows if these guys will get run out of town a la Tucker and his sweet cars but this invention certainly has the capacity to change the world as we know it.
blief 
Ooooooooh, that’s amazing! It blows my mind when something like this comes along – it seems like it was such an obvious thing to (try to) invent.
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I was looking for such a product a few months ago and found some info about King County and Porous Concrete/Asphalt. One such example is the NSPAR Bike Path .
I hope to use something simlilar if we ever get to build another house. I suppose it wouldn’t work so well in climates where the ground freezes a lot. It might just turn your conrete into gravel. Around here our ground does freeze once or twice a year but typically only for less than a day. I wonder if that makes a difference. Can something freeze a little?
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I second what Brad said, when we were deliberating regarding the strip beside the driveway a couple of years ago I found a website that had a similar product, don’t have that link, but eco-crete is definitely out there!
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I wouldn’t worry about freezing; by underlayment using coarse gravel the porous concrete should be sufficiently dry when cold weather hits to not be endangered.
I’ d like to try some for my driveway; it needs to be redone anyway! As you know, my driveway is quite sloping so a hard rain (or fast thawing of a snow cover) would run off the excess.
Grumpy, (excitedly!)
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