Some of you might have seen a few of my posts. Long story short, my wife and I (Canadian and American) moved to Burgundy a year ago to make wine. We have completed degrees at the Lycee Viticole in Beaune and have purchased an old house/winery in the village of Savigny-les-Beaune.
So far we have removed all the huge old stones that made the floor of what is to be the cuverie. The plan is to do a new floor, put in drainage and water. Currently, we are thinking about a 12 cm thick cement floor with a 2% slope, drains from ACO (rated D-400) and putting copper pipes below the finished floor to hook up a couple taps. Here are some photos of the work so far.
I am interested in getting advice on materials, techniques, etc. from everyone here. Keeping in mind that we are trying to do the best quality work we can, with a fairly limited budget and do as much work ourselves as possible.
What kind of material are the floors of your wineries made from? Cement? Tile? What % slope should I incorporate? If we do concrete how thick should it be?
How are your drains set up? What types of drain? What rating are the drain covers?
How about the water pipes? Should I put them under the finished floor? Just run them along the walls? and electricity?
Any other advice on this stage of the renovation is very welcome! Looking forward to hearing from everyone and keeping you updated on our progress.
Most every winery I’ve seen stateside has concrete floor. Thickness depends on the weight you want to put on it per area – i.e. the size of tanks, how high you want to stack your barrels. Judging from your cellar, that’s likely not a huge consideration. Drains, similarly, need to be traffic rated if you’re going to be driving a forklift around. Not as much if you’re not.
Keep in mind that the kg/cm can be high from a pallet jack as well. Probably more than the fork lift. One of our drains is toast from a stack of wine rolling over it.
Interesting, we are actually calculating the quantities for the concrete and drawing up the plan now. We plan to pour a 12 cm thick floor in two slabs.
We are trying to determine a good slope. Any insights? 1% or 2%? Why? 1% might not drain as well but is 2% too steep for comfort?
Our slope will be from back down to front where there is a pre-slopped track drain running the width of the space.
Been a while since I did this, so I am going off memory.
Recollection is that the thickness of the concrete is important, but even moreso is whether it is rebar-reinforced, and if so, the spacing. Would agree that unless you plan to be driving a forklift through there (looking like probably not) it shouldn’t be a big concern. I remember doing a calculation with a project manager once and a lady in some fancy stiletto heels would have put as much pressure per square area as most of the stuff we were doing (and this was an all-indoor warehouse winery where pallet jacks, forklifts, etc, were operating) including loading a 150hL press.
I can’t recall the slopes, but they were gentle. I now work in a winery with more severe slopes everywhere and it gets a little annoying when we are trying to level crush equipment and the like.
Have worked in tile wineries before. They eventually crack. Much prefer concrete or cement even if it doesn’t look as nice.
Mostly trench drains in these parts. Easier to work with than low-point collectors, especially if the slope is gentle. My recollection was also that spotting low-points was difficult because the slope from every part of the facility had to take into account where those low-points were and you thus wound up with many sections of the floor sloping in a different direction. Trenches are more expensive, though. Ian is right that again, traffic rating for the covers depends on whether or not there will be heavy traffic.
Even though it looks more industrial, I am a big fan of burying as little as possible. Can save a lot on the back end. Exposed pipes and conduit will help in diagnosing leaks or problems and re-pulling or removing wires from buried conduit strikes me as almost an art, which requires “artiste” sparkies. Fixing something without a jack-hammer is always nice.
That is exactly what we are trying to figure out. What is the difference between a gentle and a severe slope? How gentle can the slope be and still drain?
IIRC the minimum slope required to drain concrete is 1/8" per foot, however a really good crew is essential to lay the concrete without flat spots. Also a brush finish in the direction of slope will help it drain. A 2% slope will give you a 1 1/2" drop over 6ft and, as mentioned above, will make equipment levelling a real PIA.
Glass fiber reinforcement is less expensive and easier than rebar, don’t forget to isolate the pad from the cellar walls, you’ll need to cut control joints to keep cracks under control, and sealing the surface of the pad will help you keep it clean.
All the industrial concrete floors I’ve seen poured have been on top of a crushed stone base, never seen one poured straight onto the dirt although it may be fine for light loads. If you can find a local architect familiar with the design of commercial and industrial buildings, I would think $200 for an hour or two consultation on concrete pads would be money well spent.
I agree that running utilities underneath the concrete is rarely a good idea. My preference is to run them below the ceiling so you can drop them wherever needed, also it makes changing your mind on “wherever needed” a whole lot easier!!
According to Bruce Zoecklein’s chapter on Winery Design Considerations, from his Winery Design CD, he states that a minimum of 3/16 inch per foot slope is the minimum needed for winery floors. Also Wine Business Monthly had a nice article on winery floors a few years back…Gary
1% to a center trench drain is a civilized approach. All conduit and pipes along the wall is also easy to work with, which is key. Make it easy, lugging a loaded pallet jack uphill is tiresome. Good luck!
I’m pretty certain you’ll want an engineered (rebar reinforced) cement floor.
If I had to do it over again, I would have put drains along every wall, instead of in the center of the production area, and just let the water flow wherever it wanted to. That would have had the added benefit of not having a sloped area in the center of the room, as that makes hairy to move 3 (or 4) high barrel stacks, or anything on a forklift over it, so it becomes kind of a no mans land.
Working hard here in Burgundy in the heat of the summer has not been easy. Especially with so much going on, renovations, searching for grapes and equipment, dealing with the legal and commercial sides of things…
No different than anything else, the process of analyzing and planning the renovations of an ancient winery has really been a challenge. Nevertheless, I am excited to wake up every day and take it on. I am also very grateful for all the advice we have received here from all you Berserkers!
All of the old huge stones have come out. Thanks to the help of a rented jack hammer the old concrete that covered a third of the winery is broken up. My job over the past few days has been removing the rubble and lowering the level of the base floor by some 20 cm in preparation for the concrete pour. We staked it off and ran some sting to get a visiual of the slope and decided 2% might be too much (thinking about taking a density reading on a sloped floor has got me a bit worried).
The plan now is the following;
Concrete slab with fiber 15 cm thick, rebar reinforced, with a slope around 1.5% from back to front.
Canal drain (ACO multi-drain D400) 6.5 m long with a build in slope of 0.5% running the length of the front of the winery.
Water faucet pulled in to the corner with a “puits perdu” filled with small stones, 1 m by 0.75 m and 0.6 m deep that connects to the top of the canal drain. (you can see where this will be in the third photo above)
Electric and water exposed and run along the ceiling with drops where needed.
Now that the floor is almost ready and we are really leaning towards a professional to lay and finish the concrete. We have a couple companies biding on the project now but time really isn’t on our side with August approaching so quickly. August in France… nothing moves. Luckily the harvest will be late this year in Burgundy, giving us an extra month to get things in order.
What do you think about the progress and the plan? I am really interested on your thoughts on an open rock drain under the faucet… what do you think? Good idea? Bad idea? The thing is, we have the open pit in the corner I want to bring the water in through, see the third photo above. So I need to leave it open to pull the water in, at least for now. But I can easily fill that with concrete after the water pipes are pulled in.
Just discovered this thread. Are you the same people that are behind The Road To Burgundy? Can I expect to read how this works out in the book (recently ordered)?
Hi Morten, my wife and I moved to Burgundy around a year ago now and will be making wine for the first time this year. We have called our winery, Maison Harbour. The Road to Burgundy was written by Ray Walker about his journey in creating Maison Ilan. We are good friends now with Ray, he is a great guy and the book is a great read, enjoy!
Quick update on the floor, we are closer and closer to the pour date. But with August quickly approaching, we will probably lose a couple weeks on the timeline. I will update when we have some good progress.
We poured a large concrete slab for a factory extension in a hot Atlanta summer some years ago. Apparently concrete is much more prone to cracking if it dries quickly, so in hot weather the goal is to slow down the rate of drying. Our contactor’s superviser insisted that the concrete be poured very early in the morning, and as soon as the concrete was cured enough to walk on he was out there hosing it down with water. He repeated the hose down at regular intervals thruout the day. IIRC he waited about a week before applying the seal coat.
