Permeable pavement, clay soil, general water management

I don't quite find the answer there now. If I understand correctly, pagoni prefers a gravel layer, we want to pave. Tendentially, I would have said 50cm of frost protection gravel with a maximum grain size of 32mm so that it can still be managed with a rented plate compactor. However, I am unsure if that is sufficient when water always seeps through the paving but poorly into the ground, especially with changing weather in winter with frost.

With us on clay soil it is like this, excavation about 30-40cm, filled with recycled material 0-30mm, compacted/vibrated, fine-grained chippings, paving 8cm thick. The edge to the neighbor is 2-4cm higher, the edge to the meadow is lower and the path drains there. The path changes slope several times. At the front doors is each the highest point. The path is 70m long, the property has a 10cm slope.

Hey, I have the shoes too :)
That's actually a bit less thick than I thought.

Hi ,

it looks similar on our side. Below the topsoil (30-40 cm) there is a clay layer (up to 2.00 m) and only then load-bearing, partially weathered slate rock. Additionally, there is a north-south slope of 3.00 m. We are building without a basement on a slab (approx. 155 m² floor area with garage).

We are having a drainage installed along the entire northern property boundary so that drainage of the property can be carried out via it. Connection to the drainage channel of the municipality laid in the street specifically for this purpose.

In addition, we are excavating the entire clay layer on the house site and refilling it with gravel.

The offer from February for our civil engineering work including removal and drainage amounts to 45,000 EUR. However, since then, the landfill and gravel prices have risen further. I think we have to budget around 50,000 EUR.

We are currently still considering whether to also replace the clay with gravel in the area of the planned driveway (approx. 20 m length also from north to south) (not yet included in the above offer). Certainly a very expensive solution...

Have you already implemented the exterior facilities in the meantime? For which solution did you decide?

We are still in the shell construction phase, so not many things have happened yet. I have some plans and also a blog article in the making about the plans. For the civil engineering work for the house, we had 30cm of crushed stone plus 10cm of gravel laid under the driveway. Fortunately, the soil under the house is load-bearing, as the general contractor diligently laid crushed stone on a geotextile fabric. With a 2m soil replacement, I would definitely build with a basement.

Although it is somewhat lower, the house so far sits quite well above the terrain. So it should rather not be a problem to make an accessible house entrance here. The case that water collects under the foundation, I want to manage with a dry stone wall. We need that anyway because the house lies somewhat above the original terrain towards the southwest. I would then connect it so that standing water can pass through the wall in case of doubt and simply run to the lowest point in the southwest. In normal weather, it should then get caught somewhere along the way in the vegetation (but presumably nothing will come out from under the foundation), in extreme rain I can’t prevent that some water runs downhill to the neighbor anyway.

Gutters in front of the west terrace door and front door are definitely planned; in front of the south terrace door I still have to see how I make the access. Since I am relatively close to the dry stone wall there, I would not pave but rather work with stepping stones or similar and then hardly have to fear standing water.

For secondary walkways, I meanwhile had the plan to stabilize everything with bark mulch or similar, but that is currently up in the air. I would probably rather see if I can manage with some mixed-in sand and grass. The neighbor also has the paths in the garden completely unpaved, and it seems no footpaths are forming.

An open question is still the topic of splash protection, since I have a frost shield (overlapping insulation) installed instead of a frost skirt. I am still looking for good ideas on how to keep the splash protection as small as possible and still drain possible water well. But I will probably start a separate thread for that.

A large-scale soil replacement is personally out of the question for me, if only because of the possibility that geogenic arsenic might show up during testing and disposal would then become really expensive. That was the main reason why the basement was scrapped (and the assumption that the plot is flatter ;)).

For a 2m ground exchange, I would definitely build with a basement.

It's 2m at the deepest point on the uphill side. Going downhill on the valley side, it's significantly less...
The soil would have had to be removed even with a basement. And then significantly more. So we only have the additional costs for the gravel fill.

(and the assumption that the plot is flatter ;) ).

It was the same for us. Regarding the elevation level, we slightly miscalculated and therefore planned without a basement.

But now we're quite happy. This way, we dig in a bit on the uphill side (north boundary) and thus have a certain barrier to the neighbor. Also, we hardly planned any windows for the north anyway...