Zero additional maintenance: ZAM-WSUD at Manningham City Council

Katia Bratieres

If you haven’t yet heard about the ZAM-WSUD project led by Simon Brink from Manningham City Council, here’s your chance to catch up with the latest news.

The challenge is simple: develop a raingarden design with ‘zero’ additional maintenance requirements compared to a typical kerb and channel streetscape.

The concept consists of:

Vegetation maintenance by residents
No filter media replacement
No manual litter removal
No sediment removal
50+ year design life

In addition to the City of Manningham, the partners involved in the design, development and trial of this project include Glen Eira City Council, the CRC for Water Sensitive Cities, Monash University and Melbourne Water.

Prototype design and testing was undertaken in close partnership with Monash University. Some of the design innovations involve:

using mowable buffalo grass, so residents can mow the raingarden just like they mow their nature strip;
installing channel groves to trap incoming sediment on the roadway, so it can be picked up by streetsweepers; and
adding a protective layer of coarse sand on the surface of the filter media to help prevent the formation of a sediment layer.

Testing of the prototypes showed that grass turf was thriving even over the hot summer period, and that the sediment grooves were working well. This process also allowed for slight design improvements which minimise health and safety hazards (tripping potential) and reduce the risk of clogging.

Installation of 11 ZAM WSUD raingardens across the Manningham municipality have been completed and are now being monitored.

A ZAM-WSUD handbook is also being developed to provide practical details to assist others with future installations (download the draft here).

More information?
Simon would love to help out: simon.brink@manningham.vic.gov.au.