Many new (and some old) design features are used in the East Clayton development.

Downspout Disconnected
When it rains or snow melts, an amazing amount of water comes flowing off of your roof. The downspout helps capture that water and send to a place other than inside your home! Without a downspout, water would fly off your roof all over the place and take the shortest, fastest route it can into the street where it picks up even more speed. Downspouts help direct the water to safer places to protect your home and, with a splash pad in just the right place, most of the water that hits your roof can be directed to grassed areas or gardens where most of the water can be used by plants or it can soak into the ground. 

Splash Pad
If the downspout comes out in your yard and can be too close to your foundation.  Water may seep down beside the foundations making its way through the basement walls or floor.  You might add a splash pad. It is pretty much what it sounds like. It is just like a mat that moves the water further away. It can be made of concrete or plastic and goes right under the downspout.

Topsoil
This is the top layer of the earth. It is usually 4 – 8 inches deep and is mostly held in place by the roots of grasses, trees and other vegetation. When there is good topsoil, water soaks into the soil like a sponge.  Topsoil will hold a lot of water that  grasses and  trees can use to grow.  The roots of the plants hold onto the soil so that it does not wash away. the leaves of the  plants  help to  slow down the water so that it can  soak into th e ground.  When there is enough water  the topsoil stores it until it can soak into the ground below, where it becomes part of the groundwater system.  Piling up the topsoil to a depth of 25 cm (10 inches) can make a huge difference to store water, grow healthy plants and slow down the flow of water runoff, especially when the natural soil is clay and and it takes water a long time to soak away..

Rock Pits
Another way of slowing down the flow of water over a property is to dig a hole in the ground and fill it with rocks. The spaces between the rocks in the pit  provides room for water to  be stored.  Sounds pretty simple and it is. Water gets channelled into the rock pit where it  percolates down to the ground. It can be pretty slow depending upon what kind of ground  you have. These pits, sometimes called French drains hold the water while it soaks away into the ground where it can become part of the groundwater.

Porous Driveway
You know what happens to rain when it hits a driveway, right? It sits on top in puddles or it rolls right off the asphalt towards a storm drain or creek. This can cause flooding because water can’t trickle into the ground. All the rainwater rushes to the nearest creek. What if a driveway could absorb water? What would it need to be made of? It could be made from gravel, concrete blocks or even something called, ‘porous’ asphalt or concrete. The more rain that can be directed to flow through the driveway and get absorbed by the ground, the less water that flows into the pipes that are connected to nearby creeks.

Drainage Swale
Imagine a ditch, but shallower and wider. That is a swale. You usually see these beside roads. When there is a lot of water it fills up and slowing down the flow of water on its way to the creek. When the weather is dry the swale is empty and grass and other plants grow. By holding the water temporarily in a swale, it allows some water to soak into the ground, some to evaporate and mostly it slows the water headed for the neighbourhood creek or stream. This helps protect the habitat at the creek or stream so little critters, like toads and newts don’t get swept away in the swift current that rain in typical developments can create.

Perforated Pipes
These are simply pipes with holes in them. The pipes get laid down under the ground and can drain a whole back or side yard. The pipe works in a system and is sort of like a reverse maze. Water from the soggy yard enters any of the pipes under the ground and as water moves through the pipes, it can drain out the holes and eventually run to the lowest pipe and run into the ground. A perforated pipe system will drain in hours instead of days….and drains into the ground instead of gushing all of it to streams and creeks.

Detention Pond
Another way to slow water down after a rainstorm is to send it to a settling pond. The water gets to sit quietly there slowly draining towards the creekor into the ground. If the water going into the pond is dirty, the pond lets the water slow down so that the dirt can settle down to the bottom of the pond instead of  flowing to the creek.   While the water is sitting, larger and heavier particles sink to the bottom of the pond or get trapped in soil so the nearby stream gets cleaner water.

Weather Station
There are all kinds of reasons we need to keep track of the weather and do our best to predict what is going to happen in a weather forecast. This information usually comes from a weather station. Weather stations have all kinds of gizmos for measuring what is going on with the weather. At a weather station you could measure temperature, rainfall, wind speed or barometric pressure. Sometimes there a person collects the weather station information or a computer sends the measurements to a monitoring station.