Weep Tile

Drainage aggregate lets water move freely through the soil behind a wall, but that water still needs somewhere to go once it reaches the bottom. Weep tile sits at the base of that drainage zone, usually wrapped in fabric to keep fine soil from clogging the perforations over time, and it collects the water and channels it out through the wall or to a low point away from the structure entirely. Without an outlet like weep tile, drainage aggregate just becomes a reservoir that eventually saturates and freezes instead of a real path for water to leave the site.

We run weep tile on retaining walls with any real height or backfill volume behind them, especially on the sloped lots common around Hillsville and Fancy Gap where a lot of water sheets down the hill toward a wall after every rain. Getting the outlet placement and slope of the pipe right is part of the design, not an afterthought tacked on at the end, because weep tile that doesn't actually drain to a low point does almost nothing for the wall behind it no matter how well the rest of the wall is built.