Pavers That Count as Permeable — Not Impervious — on Your Stormwater Plan.

Western Washington's rainfall makes on-site stormwater management a real engineering requirement, not a nicety. Pierce County and Tacoma both follow the Western Washington stormwater framework, where adding new and replaced hard surface above set thresholds pulls a project into stormwater review and on-site management. A conventional concrete or paver surface counts as impervious. A properly built PICP surface infiltrates where it falls — which can keep a project under threshold or provide the on-site management the rules are asking for.

PICP is not a normal patio with wider joints. It is a layered system: open-graded aggregate joint media, a choker course, and a deep open-graded stone reservoir base that stores water while it infiltrates into the native soil — or releases it slowly through an underdrain where the soil cannot take it fast enough. The design is driven by your soil's infiltration rate, the contributing drainage area, and the design storm. We run an infiltration test on the native soil first, because in much of Pierce County the underlying glacial till and clay infiltrate slowly and the system has to be designed around that, not assumed away.

Most competitors in this market do not build PICP, and the ones who do rarely speak to the permit side. We design the system to PICP standards, prepare the stormwater calculations where your project needs them for permit or impervious-surface credit, and coordinate with the permitting office. You still get the free 3D rendering, itemized pricing, and an in-house crew from sub-base through joint media.