Managing Stormwater at the Schoolyard

The Charlotte Latin School is a K-12 college preparatory school that has been operating since 1970 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The school began a project to improve the playground facilities on campus in 2023, which included converting the mulch play area to artificial turf, new fencing, and a retaining wall. These improvements required a small underground stormwater detention system.

The discharge from the detention system needed to tie into an existing stormwater line at a shallow elevation, which required a low-profile, high-volume detention system. The Engineer of Record chose 18” tall StormTank Module 25 Series units for the underground detention system – an AASHTO HS-25 (heavy truck traffic) load-rated system with a 95%+ void space ratio for stormwater storage.

Charlotte’s stormwater pretreatment requirements were satisfied by installing a StormTank Shield in the precast manhole upstream of the detention system, and by adding a StormTank Debris Row section within the detention system itself.

The StormTank Shield is a pretreatment device installed in a precast drainage structure with an internal sump. The product is designed to remove floatables, like trash and hydrocarbons, sediment, and debris from stormwater flows for later cleaning and removal.

The StormTank Debris Row system is installed in the inlet section of the StormTank Module detention system and is designed to remove sediment, trash, and debris from stormwater flows and isolate that material inside the Debris Row for later cleaning and removal. The system has been third-party verified to remove more than 90% of suspended sediment from stormwater flows.

The StormTank system was installed in the summer of 2023 with the playground expected to be put into service in the fall of 2023.

Civil Engineer of Record: Little Diversified Architectural Consulting

Sitework Contractor: Showalter Construction Company

Drainage Materials Distributor: Fortiline Waterworks