French Drain

While we love the French inspired designs at cotedetexas.blogspot.com, our next French addition won't be noticed.  Our house is on a sloping lot, and the existing landscaping did not remove water from the front of the house.  Furthermore, Emily's office is below grade (the only portion of the house below grade) and we don't want to take any chances with water getting into the house. 

So step 1 is to dig out a drainage ditch around the house.  We will then Mel-Rol the concrete block wall in front of her office to waterproof it.  Next we put in gravel and perforated pipe in front of her office, connected to a drain pipe that goes around the house and exits downslope.  This turned out to be more time consuming than expected due to the solid limestone that was 3 feet down and had to be chiseled with a Bobcat jackhammer attachment for days to get the correct slope.

The ladders below are resting on the window sill in Emily's office.

The drainage ditch continues around the master bath (the tub is inset in the bay window below).

And after installing the French drain - gravel, perf pipe, and drain pipe....



And in the front of the house the grade was too high on the slab.  So we added a couple of levels of concrete block to the garage, reframed the wall above it, and then put Mel-Rol on the block to waterproof it.  After construction is completed we will further grade the front of the house in this area.

The added benefit of the French drain was that Pete the Bobcat operator removed all of the nandia and forsythia roots from around the house and the front yard, and they were disposed of with another call to the CE Bar.