The Three Fundamental Ways Walls Manage Water

Course Description

Walls manage water in three fundamentally different ways: storage (mass walls), exclusion (perfect barrier walls), and drainage (drained walls).  While there is no “best” approach to water management — each of these three strategies is entirely valid — it is certainly true that one approach or another may be more appropriate in the context of a specific project with a particular aesthetic, material palette, and performance objectives.  This short course describes the three approaches to water management in walls and explains how water management is best understood as a system as opposed to a feature of any single component or building material. 

Course Instructor Christine Williamson

Course Length 8:20

Published 29 Mar 2022