New neighbourhood emerges from wasteland in Meißen, Germany

Since the beginning of the year, investor GEG Burgdorf XI GmbH has been building a new district with commercial and retail spaces as well as residential buildings on the Fabrikstraße site in Meißen-Cölln (Germany), which was previously unused for decades. 
In the first construction phase, a local shopping centre with a supermarket, discount store and pharmacy is being built on the 94,520 m² site. In accordance with official requirements, rainwater falling on roofs, parking areas and driveways is fed into an infiltration system with a volume of 523.87 m³ and infiltrated. The infiltration tank was constructed on site and consists of 2,416 EcoBloc Inspect smart modules from GRAF.

The employees of Schneider Systembau GmbH, Radeburg, laid the foundation with compacted sand and gravel, laid out the GRAF-Tex geotextile, assembled the modules in four layers to form a block composite measuring 27.20 m in length, 7.20 m in width and 2.68 m in height, and then enclosed it with geotextile. The pit was then filled with a sand-gravel mixture. A cover of 1.58 m was created over the tank using the excavated material from the pit.

Stormwater modules for retention and infiltration systems are subject to high horizontal and vertical load. The unique design of the EcoBloc Inspect smart modules enables optimum load transfer. This allows high loads over long periods of time in combination with a generously dimensioned installation window. The EcoBloc Inspect smart module can handle lorry load bearing up to 60 to. Four GRAF Vario 800 shaft systems were integrated into the EcoBloc infiltration tank as inlet shafts and for inspection purposes.

The soil investigation report performed by Meißner Umwelttechnik GmbH determined that it would be advantageous to use the available space on site for an infiltration system to save on future costs for water management. 
This also complies with authority guidelines to avoid discharging rainwater into receiving waters to improve flood protection and increase the groundwater recharge rate.