Applications & Markets · Stormwater source control

EPIC for Singapore

Why an EPIC cell can provide the detention volume PUB's Code of Practice already requires, hold the water inside the landscape and give it back to the planting instead of the drain.

Subject: Stormwater source control · PUB Code of Practice Clause 7.1.5
Format: PDF · 8 pages · 2.9 MB
Access: Open

Download PDF Free · no form

About this document

PUB's Code of Practice requires every development of 0.2 hectares or more to control its peak runoff, and a detention tank must be empty within four hours. This eight-page paper sets out how the same volume can be held in an EPIC cell beneath the landscape and reused for irrigation.

It opens with Singapore's position from published sources: S$2.5 billion of drainage improvement since 2011, 2,985 mm of island-wide rainfall in 2025 at 18% above the long-term average, and a non-domestic potable water tariff of S$3.24 per m³ from 1 April 2025. It then sets what a detention tank commits an owner to for the life of the building (pumps, EMA licences, quarterly records and an annual declaration) beside an EPIC cell.

A comparison table sets detention tanks, ABC Waters bioretention and rain gardens, vegetated swales, porous paving and infiltration chambers, rainwater tanks with pumped irrigation, and sprinkler and drip irrigation against EPIC, drawing on two peer-reviewed studies of Singapore installations. The mechanism section explains how one profile detains, filters and irrigates, holding about 100 L/m² and sustaining 25 mm per hour through mature turf.

The record covers five installations with a third party of record: Cambria Elementary School, Wildwood Commons, Westside Park, the SR-28 road filter at Lake Tahoe and Stanford Farms. None is in Singapore, and the paper says so. It maps six catchment types on the island, the fit with PUB, ABC Waters, BCA Green Mark and NEA vector control, and proposes one instrumented pilot cell read for twelve months.

100 L/m²Held in the profile, about 100 mm of rainfall depth

25 mm/hrSustained through mature turf

56%Runoff volume reduction at Wildwood Commons, monitored 2007

85%Total phosphorus reduction at Wildwood Commons, monitored 2007

What is inside

01
The positionSingapore's drainage investment, rising rainfall and the cost of buying water back to irrigate.
02
The dutyCode of Practice Clause 7.1.5, what a detention tank commits the owner to, and the same duty met two ways.
03
The alternativesSix established answers compared with EPIC, using Singapore's own published monitoring.
04
The mechanismHow one profile detains, filters and irrigates, and why the chamber does not silt shut.
05
The recordFive stormwater and rainwater-harvesting installations, each with a third party of record.
06
The fitSix catchment types on the island and the regulatory fit with Singapore's agencies.
07
What we are asking forOne instrumented pilot cell on a site that already carries a Clause 7.1.5 duty, and the sources.