A patio that drinks the rain
2,500 square feet of Belgard Aqua-Bric permeable pavers at one of East Nashville’s busiest outdoor bars, built to carry a Saturday crowd and swallow a summer storm.
- Client
- El Fuego Restaurante
- Location
- 3917 Gallatin Pike
- Paver
- Belgard Aqua-Bric
- Area
- ±2,500 SF
Tiki bar courtyard, zero puddles
El Fuego Restaurante, on Gallatin Pike in Nashville’s Inglewood neighborhood, wanted an outdoor space that feels like a vacation — palm thatch, cedar, string lights — and a floor that could handle hundreds of guests, bar carts and Nashville downpours without ponding.
We paved the courtyard that ties the whole site together: the open-air bar, the cedar pavilion, the covered seating wings and the raised terrace out by the mural. Every walking surface between them — about 2,500 square feet — is Belgard Aqua-Bric permeable interlocking concrete paver, laid in a herringbone field with soldier-course borders against the slab edges, planters and the curved terrace wall.
That’s the point of a permeable paver patio. Water doesn’t run across this one looking for a drain. It drops through the joints into an open-graded stone reservoir under the pavers and soaks out slowly — so the courtyard is walkable minutes after a storm, and the site sends less runoff to the street.
No sand. Just stone and void space.
A permeable patio is a drainage system you can stand on. Instead of a sand setting bed that seals the surface, every layer is washed, open-graded stone with room for water between the rocks.
- Joints stay open. Filled with chip stone, not polymeric sand, so rain goes straight down.
- The base is the reservoir. Void space in the stone holds a storm’s worth of water while it infiltrates.
- Built for traffic. Interlocking pavers spread load from crowds, carts and service equipment.
Typical section shown. Layer depths are engineered per site for soil and loading.
Open sooner after rain
No standing water on a patio that seats the crowd. Guests are back outside while the street is still wet.
Less runoff, fewer headaches
Stormwater soaks in on site instead of sheeting toward the building, the bar or the neighbors.
Repairable forever
A stained or damaged paver comes out and goes back in. No saw-cut patches, no mismatched concrete.
Walk the courtyard
Got a patio that floods?
Restaurants, breweries, event spaces, HOA amenities — Smarter Scapes builds permeable paver patios that stay open when it rains. Tell us about your space and we’ll come look. For large commercial and municipal permeable paving, see our Permeable Pavers Contractors division.