This just in from the field – Adrian is waterproofing the drainage plane around his slab, and this is really cool! The area around the slab doesn’t just automatically drain properly – you have to make it happen. Here, you can see how Adrian is doing it. He puts down a perforated drain pipe (it’s black) covered in a filter fabric along the bottom of the wall. The pipe slopes from the middle to the sides. Gravel then gets installed over the drain pipe. In addition, a two-layer waterproofing membrane is installed on the exterior wall so that water will just drain down the exterior wall and out the french drains instead of getting in the, in this case, the wine room. Yikes! That would be bad.
Take a look below and see what Adrian says about what he’s doing:
French drains and gravel
Now that the waterproofing and drainage plane have been installed, the french drains and gravel are being installed.
The black layer is the drainage plane, installed on top of the waterproofing. This allows any water that does approach the wall to drain down to the drain pipe system below.
Along the bottom of the wall is a perforated drain pipe covered in a filter fabric so that none of the gravel can accidentally get into the pipe. The pipe slopes from the middle to the sides. Gravel will be installed over the drain pipe.
