Permacon flowerbed: question with a picture.

[Swedishchef]

Hey guys

I built a flower bed today in front of my foundation. However, I forgot to do 2 things:

1- Put geotextile between the dirt and the stone. Is this REALLY necessary? I can dig some dirt out and ut the geotextile in if needed.

2- I only have 1 foot of dirt and lots of 3/4 clean stone underneath it for drainage. I did not install a drain tile in my flower bed. Before the flower bed was installed, I simply had nothing in front of the foundation and it didn't cause me any water troubles. Should I really installed a drain tile?

PS: the off chute from my downspout will be placed in a more appropriate manner, this is just a temp fix.

Andrew

 

[jimbom]

Drainage layer. A good drainage layer will be concrete sand from the redi mix(the fine aggregate fraction). Single size stone of any size just plugs up quickly since the gaps are not filled with a mix of sizes. A good drainage layer will have a drain to daylight to move the collected water away from the foundation. The layer beneath the drainage layer should be clay or other material impervious to water.

A good stone or gabion wall will have filter cloth to keep the retained soil from migrating through the cracks.

But it is a flower bed. As long as that is not a basement, who cares.

 

[Swedishchef]

My basement has amazing drainage.

I added tar the height of the bed, that way when the dirt/gravel retains the water, it won't try to infiltrate through the concrete.

Just asking opinions...I will be mixing the dirt with some 0-3/4 gravel (a bit) to help with drainage inside the bed...

A