The house entrance is located 2/3 up from the ground floor and facing the village road. The original house that was built on this land more than 150 years ago was positioned right against the road. Over the years and as the house became a ruin, the wall that was aligned to the road got partly covered up by road repairs and improvements. The new house was positioned away from the road (mainly for safety reasons) thus creating a 3.5 to 4-meter gap between the old house wall and the new one. Rather than filling this gap, we used it to place a 20 000 litre rainwater cistern (situated under the garage) and a cellar for the mechanical and laundry rooms. It is the concrete slab that’s above the cellar that we have just finished paving.

The paving was made as follows:

• Landscaping cloth
• EPDM membrane (waterproof membrane used for flat roofs or swimming pools)
• Metallic grid (used by tilers for strengthening tiling work)
• Concrete mix
• Slates (leftover from the roof work)
• Ciment grouting

The landscaping cloth is a bit of an experiment on our part. We think it will help maintain the EPDM membrane in place (even though the terrace slope is minimal) and prevent and/or absorb any condensation that may occur between the concrete slab and the membrane. The membrane was placed so it would go up by 4 to 5cm on each wall surrounding the terrace just like when waterproofing an italian shower base. We added a waterproofing agent to the grouting mix.