Contributed photo
Hank Keiper, right, of the SEFA Group and a member of the Central Virginia Concrete Advisory Council, helps with the concrete patio project at Stonewall Jackson Middle School. His children attend the school. Watching the work are, from left, Madeline Cadaret, principal Anita Wallace, Jacob Keiper and Blake Bush.

Patio project adds new teaching tool
By J. Keith Beazley
Pervious Concrete
Oct 29, 2008

Stonewall Jackson Middle School gets new concrete patio

Lynn Shope, a life sciences teacher at Stonewall Jackson Middle School, posted a simple request for a concrete patio in the school’s newsletter. 

What she received was a Pervious Concrete teaching tool for her students and the entire Hanover County Public Schools system.

Central Virginia Concrete Advisory Council member Hank Keiper of the SEFA Group, whose children attend Stonewall Jackson, contacted Shope to help with the requested patio project. 

Of particular interest to Shope is the Chesapeake watershed and Pervious Concrete was the obvious choice for a teaching patio. 

The completed patio would be 8-foot by 14-foot and consist of 5 inches of stone underneath the 5 inches of pervious concrete, both donated by VRMCA member Essex Concrete. 

A meeting in the summer was arranged by the teacher with Paul Cash, director of building services for the Hanover County Public Schools, for the approval of the installation of the patio.

During the summer break, volunteers from the school and from VRMCA excavated the subsoil, hauled the rock, installed the edge forms and hauled in the concrete, all by wheelbarrow down the halls of the school to the interior courtyard. 

Mark Townsend, Essex Concrete, and Hank Keiper finished and rolled the pervious surface.

This project is an example of the partnership that can develop between education and business and prove beneficial to both.

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