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21/10/2026

When every square metre counts, where does your stormwater storage go?

On constrained sites, stormwater detention has to fit around everything else: building footprints, parking, access and landscaping. Finding room for conventional storage can add another challenge to an already complex design.

Aquacomb offers an alternative, with a modular detention system that can be integrated into concrete slabs, driveways and other hardstand areas.

Rather than treating stormwater storage as a separate element to accommodate, it can be considered as part of the wider site design, making use of areas that already serve a purpose.

The earlier these decisions are made, the more options there are to find an approach that works for the site, the building and its stormwater requirements.

Find out more about Aquacomb: https://www.watersmart.co.nz/aquacomb/

Urban trees and paved surfaces don’t always go hand in hand. But with the right design, they don’t have to compete.Klaud...
20/10/2026

Urban trees and paved surfaces don’t always go hand in hand. But with the right design, they don’t have to compete.

Klaudia will be representing Watersmart and Porous Lane at the NZ Arb Annual Conference in Rotorua, 29-31 October, talking all things permeable pavement and what it can mean for urban tree health.

Porous Lane allows rainwater to pass through the surface and into the soil below, helping provide moisture to tree roots. Its specialised installation profiles can also accommodate existing roots, reduce the need for excavation around trees and help minimise soil compaction.

There’s also promising research from Australia showing improved tree growth through passive irrigation systems incorporating Porous Lane, alongside a growing number of local applications around established trees.

For arborists working to protect trees in increasingly built-up environments, these are important considerations. The challenge is making sure tree health is part of the conversation early, when pavement, drainage and site design decisions are being made.

If you’re attending NZ Arb, come and have a chat with Klaudia about where Porous Lane might fit into your projects.

Find event details and register here: https://www.nzarbconference.co.nz

19/10/2026

Come and see water solutions working, not just described on a brochure.

Our innovation hub in Avondale, Auckland, is a working building with our stormwater, water recycling, and flood protection solutions installed and running.

It's also an events space for the industry and we're proud of the momentum building, with a growing number of architects and engineers coming through for NZIA and Engineering New Zealand events.

It's not only for scheduled events though. We can host a session tailored to your team, with the chance to see the solutions in action, share ideas, and earn CPD points. Or if a full session is more than you need, you're welcome to pop in for a look.

To book a session or arrange a visit, email [email protected]

A standard concrete footpath is a bigger carbon decision than it looks. According to Life Cycle Assessment analysis, Por...
13/10/2026

A standard concrete footpath is a bigger carbon decision than it looks. According to Life Cycle Assessment analysis, Porous Lane can cut that footprint by up to 79%, and by 44% compared with asphalt.

The numbers matter more when the performance case holds up too. On Auckland's Eastern Busway, mature magnolia roots kept lifting and cracking rigid concrete paths. The project team needed a surface that stayed safe for pedestrians without sacrificing the trees. Porous Lane moves with root growth rather than resisting it, and its permeable structure lets rainwater reach the root zone below.

It's also made with up to 60% recycled tyre material. On that one installation, 500kg of waste tyres (roughly 55 car tyres) stayed out of landfill and went into infrastructure with a design life of up to 25 years.

For specifiers, the takeaway isn't that one material replaces another everywhere. It's that lower carbon and long service life don't have to be a trade-off, and that recycled content can do real work in the pavement build-up rather than sitting on a spec sheet as a nice-to-have.

Thanks to EBOSS for featuring the Eastern Busway case study in their October low carbon design issue. Read it here 🔗 https://www.eboss.co.nz/ebossnow/watersmart-paving-the-way-for-low-carbon-infrastructure-and-a-circular-economy?

Sustainability credentials are easy to claim and hard to actually earn. We've just extended our Toitū certification, and...
11/10/2026

Sustainability credentials are easy to claim and hard to actually earn. We've just extended our Toitū certification, and the reason it matters to us isn't the badge; it's what verifying it forces you to look at.

Toitū accreditation means independently checking resource use and climate impact across the business, not just at the headline level. For us, that runs from how rainwater harvesting systems are designed, through to what happens to materials at end of life.

It's also the same thinking behind the products themselves. Porous Lane exists partly because recycled tyre rubber needed a genuine second use, not because "sustainable" sells better on a spec sheet. Cutting operational waste matters whether or not anyone's auditing it.

None of this replaces the actual test, which is whether the water solutions we build hold up for the people and projects relying on them. But if we're asking specifiers and councils to trust the performance claims, it's fair that our own operational claims get checked the same way.

Concrete and asphalt don't just reflect heat; they store it. All day, every hot day, through a dry El Niño summer especi...
07/10/2026

Concrete and asphalt don't just reflect heat; they store it. All day, every hot day, through a dry El Niño summer especially.

The mechanism is straightforward: sealed, dark surfaces absorb solar radiation and hold it as the day goes on. Rain can't get through sealed concrete, so the soil underneath dries out, and without moisture in the ground, cities lose the natural cooling effect that comes from evapotranspiration, the process that keeps parks and tree-lined streets noticeably cooler than a car park on the same block.

El Niño makes this worse before it makes it better. Dry conditions reduce moisture for street trees and green spaces further, wilting foliage and thinning the shade cover that would otherwise offset some of that stored heat. And when the dry spell does break, it's often with the kind of intense, isolated downpour El Niño tends to produce in eastern regions, rain that a dried-out, hardened surface sheds rather than absorbs

Permeable paving works on both problems at once. Porous Lane lets water pass directly into the subgrade instead of running straight to a stormwater drain, which keeps moisture available to tree roots and helps the surface itself hold less heat, since it's not a solid heat-storing mass in the same way.

Not a fix for a hot summer on its own, but it's one of the few interventions that works on heat and stormwater at the same time, which matters when a season brings both.

🔗 Learn more: https://www.watersmart.co.nz/news/how-to-reduce-heat-island-effects-caused-by-el-nio

"Dry summer coming" is the headline. It's also only half the story, and the half that gets left out is the one causing t...
06/10/2026

"Dry summer coming" is the headline. It's also only half the story, and the half that gets left out is the one causing the expensive surprises.

NIWA has declared a strong El Niño, expected to peak over the 2026–27 summer, with a real chance of ranking among the strongest on record. The assumption most people are working from is that this means less water, nationwide. It doesn't. El Niño doesn't remove rain from the country, it moves it.

The north and east are drying out. The west is getting wetter, and wetter doesn't just mean more rain, it means more flood risk, driven as much by intensity as by volume.

Two very different problems, happening in the same season, a few hundred kilometres apart. A water security plan built for one region doesn't transfer to the other, and a generic "El Niño prep" checklist misses that split entirely.

The useful starting point isn't a national forecast. It's a site assessment: which risk actually applies here, where water would enter or run off this specific property, and what a realistic event looks like for this location. Preparation designed in at that stage is far cheaper than anything retrofitted after the damage is already done.

Not sure which risk applies to your site? The full regional breakdown is linked below, or get in touch and we'll help you work out what to actually prepare for.

🔗 https://www.watersmart.co.nz/news/el-nino-nz-flood-drought-risk

Our Sales and Operations Manager, Simon Carter, spent the day at Property Council New Zealand's Enabling Auckland: Infra...
05/10/2026

Our Sales and Operations Manager, Simon Carter, spent the day at Property Council New Zealand's Enabling Auckland: Infrastructure for Growth event and came back with one point worth repeating: infrastructure keeps following demand, when it needs to lead it.

Auckland's housing and intensification targets are ambitious. The transport, water and wider infrastructure to support that growth has to be planned, funded, and delivered in the right places ahead of time, not retrofitted once the pressure's already showing.

One development from the day stood out: infrastructure capacity maps that give the development sector better visibility of current network conditions. Knowing where constraints actually sit, earlier, gives developers, designers and infrastructure providers more runway to find the right response, rather than discovering a capacity problem partway through a consenting process.

From where we sit, those responses don't always have to mean a bigger pipe or a new reservoir. Sometimes it's staging development differently. Sometimes it's on-site or precinct-scale systems that take pressure off centralised infrastructure rather than adding to it.

The ambition isn't really in question. The real test is whether planning, funding and delivery can move in step with it.

🔗 Read the five key insights we took from the discussion: https://www.watersmart.co.nz/news/infrastructure-before-intensification

Until now, the granny flats exemption has had a quiet grey area in the legislation: the rules didn't clearly allow for a...
04/10/2026

Until now, the granny flats exemption has had a quiet grey area in the legislation: the rules didn't clearly allow for a granny flat to connect via the existing dwelling's utility connection. This meant councils often had little choice but to require a wholly new one, even when the existing connection would have done the job for a fraction of the cost.

MBIE has confirmed that changes closing that gap take effect on 8 October 2026. Granny flats will be able to connect via the primary dwelling's existing water, wastewater and stormwater services, rather than defaulting to a new connection, provided council or utility approvals are in place.

The part specifiers and councils still need to check hasn't changed. The existing system has to have the capacity, and still comply with the Building Code. A connection designed for one dwelling doesn't automatically have headroom for two.

Where it doesn't, or where no connection is available, a compliant on-site system is still the fallback. That's worth identifying at the PIM stage, before design work gets too far along, since a capacity shortfall found late is a far more expensive problem to fix.

Full guidance goes live on MBIE's Building Performance website from 8 October.

If you're assessing whether an existing connection has room for a second dwelling, we're happy to talk through what that capacity check actually involves.

FenceTank started with a problem most specifiers know well: rainwater tanks need space, and on today's smaller residenti...
29/09/2026

FenceTank started with a problem most specifiers know well: rainwater tanks need space, and on today's smaller residential sites, that space is often the first thing to go. So we moved the tank to the boundary line instead.

The engineering was the straightforward part. Boundary-mounted tanks weren't something the regulations had anticipated, so getting there meant years of technical validation and testing, including securing an MBIE Determination confirming FenceTank doesn't pose a fire risk to neighbouring properties, a question that had been an open barrier to specifying it with confidence.

That groundwork is done, and there are now more than 450 FenceTank systems installed across New Zealand, providing close to 500,000 litres of rainwater storage on sites where space for a conventional tank is often the limiting factor.

It's a reminder of what real innovation actually involves, not just a better design, but the years of unglamorous work that make it something you can put in front of a consenting authority without a second thought.

Address

74 Patiki Road, Avondale
Auckland
1026

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

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+64800110808

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