DIY Retaining
walls
Welcome to our page 40
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Dear readers, there are many types of retaining walls, and I am sorry to say that in this page we cannot show you mane pictures of them. But if you visit our hub page article, the link to this article is at the top of this page; then you should be able to see a lot more that what we are trying to show here. So, have a go, all you need to do is click on the link, at the top of this page.
DIY Retaining walls
Welcome to our page 40
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DIY Retaining walls
This stone retaining wall
Welcome to our hub, DIY Retaining walls
Let us talk about retaining walls. Most people that own a
house, always would like to enjoy to improve their property by doing a few
things in the yard, where they can stay outside and have a garden, or perhaps
have a barbecue with their family and friends, but there are times when it is
not easy to do, because the yard is not level and in some places it is hard
even to stand up straight, so it is time to think of something about how to
improve the situation, perhaps a retaining wall might help, so how do we go
about, how to build a retaining wall one may ask?
Before we answer that question, let us talk about the
retaining stone wall shown here in this hub, I reckon that it is a very well
built stone wall, here we need to say that we all would like to be able to
build ourselves a wall like that, or get some professional to build a stone
retaining wall like the one shown here at the beginning of this hub, if we need
one, but a wall like that is very costly and also hard to build, unless you are
an expert and know what needs to be done.
So let us see what we can learn from this stone wall
picture, just by looking at it and trying to imagine how this wall has been
built. What we should note from the picture is that the retaining wall has been
built leaning towards the bank it is holding up, we can see this at the right
end of the wall where the wall goes around the corner, the stones are laid dry as there is no sign
of any mortar around, the stones are not all the same size, and they are longer
and shorter stones, but they are all the same thickness and they are laid the
same way as we lay a course of bricks, but at the same time the mason has made
sure that the vertical join are not setting one above the other, and this is a
hard thing to do with stones all different size, everything is so tidy, the
wall thickness is not shown anywhere, but because there is a very low wall
started near, it seems that the wall has been built like a double brick wall,
we can also guess that perhaps some of the short stones are not really short,
but they have been laid like a header brick to tie the front with the back of
the wall, at the top the last course of stone, the stones are longer and
perhaps as wide as the whole wall itself, so that they would tie everything
together. These are the main features that we can learn from looking at this
stonewall picture.
Now that we have explained that let us go back and try to
write about some do it yourself retaining walls, as there are many easy and
also hard retaining walls to build, as there are many reasons for building
them.
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How to build
a retaining wall
Okay, there are several ways how to build a retaining wall
and there are several types of retaining walls that we can build. Therefore,
first of all we have to see what we gain by building this type of retaining
wall, or that type of retaining wall, and above all how much it could cost us,
in other words we have to study the situation first, so that we can decide what
type of retaining wall to build. Now here we need to say also that we should
try to build our retaining walls with those building materials that are easily
available, to avoid extra cost. In other words look first where you are and
what local materials are available. You see, if you are in a place where stones
or rocks are plentiful, and you might even have some of these in your yard,
then it could be a lot cheaper to build your retaining wall with these
materials, and even if you have to buy the lot they would be cheap anyhow; but
if you are in a place where there are plenty of trees and there is even a
sawmill nearby, then it would be more appropriate to build it with timber.
Having said that it is obvious that for you to decide what
is the best retaining wall or walls to build we need to show and explain to you
what could be done and how could it be done. Now this article is being written
for this very purpose in mind, therefore here under we will try to do just
that. Let us start with a very easy and cheap retaining wall that most people
would be able to do it themselves, even if they do not know much about building
anything, as long as they have a few tools and know a little bit how to use
them; here we suggest that anyone of us is able to dig a few holes in the
ground to place a few short posts and place a couple of sleeper timber planks
against those posts and secure them by nailing or screwing them to the posts.
It sound and is very simple, isn’t it? But this is not the only retaining wall
that we would like to show you so keep reading this article as we add more and
more to it, as it could become interesting and you could even learn something
about building them.
Timber
sleeper retaining walls
Building a low timber sleeper retaining wall is very easy,
just about everybody would be able to do it, you can do it yourself, if you
follow our explanation in this text here, all you need is a crowbar, a post
hole shovel, a hammer a few long nails or screws, a saw, a type measure and a
few treated pine sleeper that today are easily available at most timber yards.
Here are a couple of addresses of local timber merchants and
hardware to get what you want, just for everybody to check them out; you need
to find your own, if you live somewhere else.
Now, you have visited your local supply and you have got all
you need and you are ready to start, you have also worked out where you want
your sleeper wall to go; So start digging the first hole where the wall starts,
you need to dig this hole about 600 mm or more in the natural ground for the
post to be strong enough to hold the pressure of the retaining wall when the
wall is back filled; you may have to concrete around the post for extra
strength, but this is not a must do, if the retaining wall is low, because you
can replace this with, packing the soil tightly around the posts and if you
have some rocks, wedge them between the top of the hole you have dug and the
post at ground level, because the rocks will exercise their pressure on a
larger surface of the natural soil than the post, they will be able to hold
back the soil pressure of the wall more easily, now that you have done the
first post, you can repeat the same procedure for next post and so on.
Posts can be made from the same material of the sleepers;
you just have to saw them to the right length and fix them in the ground as we
have said above. Just to make it easy let us say for the time being that your
wall is going to be just the length of a sleeper plank and you have dug the two
holes and fixed the two posts. So now you can just place the first sleeper
against the posts at the required level; the levels of the sleepers would be
better if you work it out from the top down, because it is easier to change the
bottom than to top, you see, in this case you can always dig a bit or add a bit
of soil at the bottom to fit the bottom sleeper. So mark on the posts the level
you want to reach with your last sleeper, and then mark down from this level
the number of sleeper you are fixing on these posts, once you have done that
you are ready to fix your sleepers on the posts.
Fixing your
sleeper to the post
To fix the sleepers to the post now is simple, but still you
need to do a few things right, if you want your wall to last as long as
possible with the materials you are using. Now it is useful to know that in
this case it is highly advisable that you use galvanized nails or screws to fix
the planks to the posts, because the retaining wall is in contact with the wet
or humid ground constantly and therefore normal nails or screws will rust
easily.
You have bought some 75 mm and 100 mm galvanized nails to do
the job, so you hope to be able to drive these nail into the sleepers and posts
just by using a hammer, because you have not got a drill, and even if you have
you think that nailing them is the fastest way to get the job done.
Okay, if you are good with your hammer and can drive nail
easily it is the best way to go, provided that the timber is soft enough to do
that, and if you have used treated pine sleeper it can be done, as all you need
to do now is to place the sleepers where you have marked on the posts and nail
them in, and then you can backfill behind the retaining wall and the job is
done.
But what about if you are using hardwood or old dry hardwood,
because you got it very cheap from a second hand timber yard, because they were
overstocked they sold this timber at a very special price, which was less than
half the price of the treated pine sleepers; so you were happy to buy it
because it was really cheap and the timber being hardwood would last for a very
long time, but now you might have a problem to fix the sleepers to the posts,
because it is near impossible to drive nails into this old dry hardwood timber,
unless you drill a hole for every single nail, and even then the nails might
bend even if you are an expert with the hammer.
If this is the situation and it is hard to nail this timber
together, you could be able to overcome the problem by using couch screws or
bolts, so you use a drill and drill a hole for your galvanized couch screws or
bolts and tighten the screws or the bolt nuts with a spanner. But if you don’t
want to do this extra work and you want to use the galvanized nails that you
have already bought, then you could do the following: drill a hole as deep as
you can just use a bit a fraction smaller then the diameter of your nails, then
try first with the 75 mm nails how you go, if it works and you believe that the
nail go deep enough into the supporting post and hold well then your problem is
solved, but if the nail bends or don’t go deep enough then you can try the
following, and this is one of the last tricks of the old trade, which not many
people know or use, this trick is not a trick at all and once you know it, you
could feel even stupid for not thinking about it yourself; so what is it? Okay,
when you pick up your nail to nail in the hole you have drilled, dip the point
of the nail a couple of centimetre into a bit of Vaseline or mechanical grease,
if this is not available just wet a bar of soap and rub the point of the nail
on the wet soap, this greasing of the end of the nail will make it easier to
drive it into any wood including dry old hardwood.
I believe that I have said
enough about simple timber retaining walls, for you to have some idea how to
build them, so, now let us talk about another type of retaining wall that could
be easy to build, it is a type of concrete wall that the blocks are laid dry,
so anyone can have a go; and if you don't get it right the first time it is
easy to fix.
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Link Block Mortarless Walls
Link Block Mortarless Retaining Wall Blocks
This is a different type of a retaining wall
made with dry blocks, as the mortar is not required, it is a low wall easy to
build, and so most people would be able to do it themselves. Now let me tell
you this, on the internet I have found this local supplier who has also placed
a few short videos how to build these walls, at the bottom of the page, if you
use the link here-under, so I reckon it is worth to watch them if you want to
build any retaining walls in the future. As I have said this is only a local
supplier in Brisbane Australia, therefore the same materials may or may not be
available where you happen to be living, but by watching these videos you are
going to learn something useful anyhow.
No need for Mortar
So, I hope you have used the link above and
you have been able to see the videos. Anyhow whatever you have learned could be
helpful one day.
And now I would like to explain a certain
situation that I have come across while I was writing this hub.
Let me
explain the situation.
Dear readers this article was supposed to be just about
retaining walls, but as it happens I was forced to change that name because it
was already taken in Hub Pages, so do not aspect that all the retaining walls
described here are suitable to do it yourself, just because we have named our
hub, DIY Retaining walls, because a lot of the retaining walls that we are
going to describe here are not going to be easy to build, so they are usually
jobs for trades people, but if you feel that you can do the job then have a go
at it, sometimes a bit of challenge is good for you. Now that we have explained
the situation let me continue to describe how to build retaining walls, so let
me describe how to build a garden rock wall.
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Building a garden rock retaining wall
To build a garden rock wall as shown in the picture here is
a lot harder than you think, and you need to know how to go about it, you see
for a start you need to have a good eye to see how the rocks that you have can
fit together to make a wall. There are a few ways how to do this depending how
tall the wall is going to be and lots of other things.
You see if you have
only a very low wall you can just lay one single rock one after another, or two
rocks one on top of another making sure that you choose the best face to show
at the top and at the front, the other part of the rock can be hidden ether in
the ground, or at the back since you are backfilling behind the wall; in this
case it is not necessary to use any concrete, as the stones can be laid dry,
but if you want you can use concrete as well.
To start with dig all the grass and loose soil even if your
wall is going to be low. If the wall is going to be in a place where the ground
is slopping down make sure that you dig deep enough and reach solid natural
ground at least, so that the wall you are building can sit a couple of inches
or a lot more than that into this firm ground, So that your wall is not going
to slope down the first heavy rain you have after building it.
As we said in this case we are only building a low stone
wall and we are not going to use anything to bind the wall together, so there
is no cement or anything else between the stones, in this case because there is
nothing to stop the rain water to run between the stones you don’t need to
worry about drainage. You see one of the greatest problems with retaining walls
is the water that can build behind them, the water and wet soil puts pressure
on the wall and if the water cannot get out the wall is going to fail.
Now it could be helpful to have a look at some stone
retaining wall, and for this reason in mind I have found this link in the
Internet; so, have a look at the pictures in this link; www.australianrockwalls.com.au/ there are several types of stone
walls, now you can start thinking how and why they have been built that way.
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Deciding to
build your own rock wall
You have been doing some works in the backyard as you needed
more space, you wanted to build a car port and also put a trampoline for the
kids. You have done the digging and are satisfied that everything is going to
fit easily; but now you have this bank that stands almost vertical in the backyard,
it looks ugly and you know that when the first heavy rain comes it is going to
start washing it down and worse still it may collapse. So you think of building
a retaining wall, perhaps a stone rock wall would be good to hold the soil up.
For this reason you have had a couple of quote for this job
and had a good talk to the contractors as you did not want to spend more money
that was strictly necessary, they did their best but still you cannot afford to
pay the full price, beside that you found that if you lay a dry stone wall,
ether you have to use stones that have been cut at the quarry and they cost a
lot, or you have to have a rock wall with a wider base and this is going to
take away some of the space you created when you dug, so really you need to
think about it.
So you have decided to build the stone retaining wall
yourself, what you have decided is that you are going to build an hybrid stone
wall, which you believe would do the job without costing too much and also it
would not take too much space; therefore, you have already looked for a rock
supplier and ask for prices of the different materials you might need, because
you think that you can afford it if you do the job yourself.
By pure chance you have learned from the blokes that have given
you the prices how many cubic meters of rocks you might need and another few
things that you were not so sure before; well done sometimes in the building
game things work out this way, you learn a bit from here a bit from there and
then you can decide what to do with the information you have collected. There
is nothing wrong for doing this as long as you do not do it purposely, but if
it does not work out, then it is okay to use what you have learned from them.
I have to say that it has been done to me many times and
that I have done this myself; not only on quoting but also in buying something
new, if I have to buy something that I have never used before, I go to at least
three places and inquiry about it, by asking the right questions not only I learn
how much it is going to cost me, but I have learned also how to use whatever I
was going to buy in the first place, of course I end up buying from one of them
what I wanted to buy in the first place; sometimes I call this let me go first
to spy and then to buy, I know that some of these people are going to feel a
bit hurt, for using their time for nothing, but so what, sometimes you win and
sometimes you lose, as I have said it has been done to me as well and I have
felt a bit hurt, when I had to spend some time working out a price to build
something, and at the end I did not get the job, so I spent all that time for
nothing, but that is life and we should accept the outcome whichever way it
goes. Anyhow now let us go back to building a rock wall.
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Building the
hybrid rock wall
This hybrid wall that we are going to build is really a big
job, it starts at the same level, as we have dug the ground approximately
level, but because we are building the wall only to the height of the natural
ground level, it is going to start from almost nothing and at the highest point
will be 1.8 meter, it is really two walls that meet and forms a square at the
highest point.
Here we have to say that today some people might think that
this cannot or should not be done, as this is neither a rock wall nor a
concrete masonry wall, as it mixes about everything, but so what, if it is
convenient, why not do it? I have to say that in my life time I have built
walls like this with whatever was available on the site; and I mean everything
in fact I was using stones that were laying in this small creek bed and pieces
of concrete that we had broken to do some alterations and old bricks, some
concrete and some mortar, this has happened a few year ago and last time I have
seen the owner he said that the wall is still there. So, most things can be
done as long as you know that it has got a good chance to last a long time.
Let us go back to
build our hybrid rock wall, first of all to build this wall you need a few
cubic meter of rocks, because you want the wall to look as a rock wall, you
don’t need very big rocks or special size rocks, because you can use the cement
wherever necessary to fill the gaps and this might be good, as the rocks could
be less expansive, you need a mixer, you need some gravel, sand and cement; and
of course you should have the tools to do the job.
You got all this on site and you can start to build. First
of all drive a couple of pegs in the ground, exactly where you wand the face of
the wall to be, tie and stretch a line on these pegs and see any adjustment
that you need to do before you start laying the first stone. What you are
looking for here is that the bank you are going to build the wall against has
been dug straight, it is almost vertical or just a few degrees sloping, you
have also dug a shallow foundation as you want the wall to be strong enough to
last for a long time, so you are satisfied that the foundation is going to be
solid enough, since it is well below the original natural ground, and therefore
can hold a lot of weight and pressure, even though you have dug it out one
side, the ground is very compact.
You have done all that you have set the pegs again so that
your wall is set to be about 10” thick overall, you have chosen this thickness
because most of the large rocks seem to be that thick, so now you are ready to
lay the first course of stones, mix a few batches of concrete and lay it in the
foundation and then before this concrete sets lay the first course of stones on
this concrete making sure that the bottom of the stones are below ground level,
so that the entire stone wall seems to start from below the ground; once you
have done that you can fill the back of the stone with concrete a bit above
ground level but below the full height of the stones, because you want to leave
enough room to lay next course of stone easily. Now the wall is all set to go,
but we need to reset how we have to continue and complete the hybrid rock wall,
the right way with the right lean against the bank. You need to lean the wall
against the bank, so that the weight of your wall by itself adds strength to
the wall.
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Completing
the hybrid rock wall
What we need to do now: first of all we are going to set up
how much lean against the bank we want, before we build this retaining wall,
here we have to keep in mind a few things before we definitely decide that;
first of all we have to consider how tall and how thick is the wall, we don’t
want the wall to lean too much and rely only on the dirt behind it to hold it back,
but at the same time we want to lean it against the bank so that the weight of
the wall is used to hold the dirt back.
Here one has to go back to look at what happens if you leans
a certain monolithic object to the point it is going to fall; what happens here
is that the monolithic object is going to fall, only after its centre of
gravity falls outside the area of the base. Now we don’t want to go this far
and we don’t want to use the centre of gravity for a few reasons, but we are
going to lean the wall about two third of the thickness, so that the very top
layer is still vertically one third of its thickness above the base; we believe
that it is very safe to go only this far and the wall would stand up even if we
don’t backfill it. Anyhow in our case we are not going to backfill anything,
because we have cut the bank exactly as the wall is going to be, you see we are
going to use the bank as a template, so we believe that we are not going to
backfill it at all.
Now that we know how much we are going to lean the wall, we
are setting a leaning profile on every corner leaning approximately 10 to 12
centimetres per metre and we are ready to resume building our hybrid rock wall.
But there is still another important thing to work out; you see we need to make
sure that when it rains the water that seeps behind the wall can run out, so we
have to leave a way to drain this water out and at this level is the right
place to do that, so we choose a few spots about a meter apart and mark them,
then when you lay next course of stones make sure that you leave a space
between the stones that the water can run out, you also have to leave the back
free of any abstractions for a course or two around this space, so in this
space after laying the front stone, just lay some smaller stones dry against
the bank to stop the concrete blocking the drain, then you can resume to
concrete the lot. Alternatively you could lay a few short pieces of pipe across
the wall for drainage, but you have still to make sure that they are clear of any
obstruction at the back near the bank.
So now you can go back to mix some cement to lay your
stones, you can mix a batch of river sand four to one that you can lay between
the rocks to give them a bit of grip, you are laying the rocks in a straight line
that you have tied on the profiles, when you do that make sure that this cement
does not come too far forward, because you still want the rock wall to look
like a rock wall, at the same time do not forget that you have to leave these
spaces with no cement at all for the seepage where you have marked, after you
have used the batch of river sand and cement and laid say a course of rocks,
you can mix one or two batch of concrete to fill the back of the stones, then
you repeat this procedure until you build the entire wall.
At the top of the wall, because the wall in not going to be
level, you may have to do some adjustment to follow the height of the ground,
here you have to use just common sense the best way you can finish, if you
happen to have enough wide and long rocks that can be used for a coping, use
them to finish your wall, if not, just use your common sense and use anything
that is available, even if it is going to be a strip of concrete in the back of
the wall, so that all the wall is tied up.
I hope I have explained well enough for you to follow my way
of building this hybrid rock wall. Here I would like to add that this is just
one way out of several other ways that can be used. A lot depends how the bank
has been cut and if it follows very closely the shape of the wall, so that you
can use it as if it is formwork, but if there is going to be some back filling
to be done, you may have to consider some temporary formwork that can be easily
removed before you backfill. All this things can vary from job to job, and if
you see that it would be hard to build your hybrid rock wall, then you have to
consider other ways to build your retaining wall.
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These
retaining walls:
When the block of land is steep it requires a lot of work to
be done, if you want a small portion of your land flat, so that you can stand
and enjoy whatever is there to enjoy and do whatever you would like to do in
the open air. See the photo here under,
they have built a besser retaining wall with an indent in it, mainly to give
extra strength to the block wall and also to put this concrete slab and use
this indent with whatever they want to do next. Note that above this block wall
there is another sleeper retaining wall, these sorts of things are very costly,
and one should really plan it out before one starts, anyhow under below we are
going to write about a Besser block retaining wall, first just a normal strong
retaining wall and after that we are going to build a leaning Besser block
wall, somehow similar to the hybrid rock wall.
Besser block
retaining wall
Besser blocks retaining walls require a reinforced concrete
foundation with steel starter bars placed exactly if possible in the centre of
the hollow part of the block, when you look at the wall from the front or back,
and if possible a bit close to the side where the pressure of the soil is going
to be, but that could be asking too much from the concrete man and the steel
fixers. So for a start a proper profile should be in place before you can even
concrete the foundations, or fix the steel in the foundation, because all
measurements need be known and easily measured while working on it.
This is a very demanding job and it is not really a do it
yourself job that is easy to do. So the name that I have given this hub DIY
retaining wall would not apply in this case, you see I apologise because I was
forced to use DIY just to overcome the problem of the title that happens when
we start a new hub and find that the name we have chosen has already been
taken.
When you start laying the first besser block in most cases,
it could be helpful if you could start the first course with an open block,
this block looks like a square C, and you lay it with the open side
facing away from the bank that it is going to hold back when everything is
done, the corners would be built with normal blocks and most of the walls are
built with blocks that look like an H, so that it is easier to fill up
with concrete, once the wall has been built. Now while the block layer is
laying the blocks, he will have to lay some horizontal steel bars between the
courses of blocks as specified, if there is a real plan and specifications, or
just use common sense, or copy from the specifications of a similar job he has
done, the vertical steel bar will be inserted from the top before or while
pouring concrete into the blocks.
Now the reason we need to use an open C shaped block
the first course becomes obvious now, because it is necessary that before we
fill up the blocks we remove the mortar that has fallen down at the bottom of
the blocks while we were laying them, you see we really want a very solid base
and we want the concrete to bind around the starter steel bars that we have
laid in the foundation and this is the best way to make the retaining wall as
strong as we can. Once that is done we can fix a plank against the openings and
we are ready to pour the concrete in the wall.
Here we have to mention that for this retaining wall we have
not mentioned any drainage yet, so what happen to the water that seeps behind
the wall needs to be worked out, you see sometimes when we build walls this
strong usually there could be a reason that we do not want any water past the
wall, perhaps it is part of a base of a house being built, so we have not even
left any weep holes in the wall, because there is going to be a drainage pipe
laid behind the wall surrounded by gravel. The wall might also be treated with
some special paints to water proof it.
This is just one type of blocks retaining wall and I am
going to write about another type, where we lean the retaining walls towards
the bank or future back fill that it is going to hold up, this is a large job
that we did years ago in a yard of a new large home in Redhill a Brisbane
suburb. We are going to write it here, just to show you another type of
retaining wall and the many ways that can be built.
Redhill backyard problem
Years ago we worked on this part brick house in Redhill, we
say part brick house because the top floor interior was made of timber and was
a brick veneer, the base was solid bricks and blocks, it was a large house and
the block of land had two street frontage. It was on a hill and the difference
between the front and the back yard was a lot, but the two street frontages was
good, because the house was being built on the higher part of the block of land
and was nearly flat there and almost level with the road, so there were no
problem there, but the back yard was very steep, in some places could have been
up to 45 degrees. When we finished the brickwork on the house we were asked
from the owner if we could build some retaining walls, because the backyard was
useless as it was. So after discussing the financial part how he would pay us;
we started to discuss how we could fix the back yard building block retaining
walls, and so it was agreed that we had to lay these block retaining wall
leaning a few degrees towards the bank and there was going to be concrete
stairs on one side, so that the back could also be entered from the back street
and so working together with the owner we did the following.
Because you cannot build a very high wall on the road
boundary, first of all a section of about 4 feet wide (1.2 m) was dug and a
foundation was poured, with starter steel bars as needed and the main wall was
set about a meter from the road where the first retaining wall was to be build,
this was the main foundation for a start, some of the small foundations and
other adjustment we had to work out as the work progressed.
The decision was that we had to build the wall leaning
towards the bank for extra strength; you see when building retaining walls the
weight of the retaining wall together with the weight of the foundation should
be more than the weight that the backfill could move, if it is possible that
you could build a very strong monolithic wall and foundation together this
could be the best solution, in this case it could never be possible, because
the job was too big, beside that you need to have a very wide and heavy
foundation and also a very strong bond between the foundation and the wall,
since this bond between the foundation and the wall is the weakest point unless
it is concrete and poured together, but we were using blocks to build the wall,
therefore it had this weakness at the bottom of the wall, so by leaning the
wall towards the bank, the weight of the wall would be the first point or
resistance.
Now, how much we should lean the wall was left to us block
layers, because we for sure would have some problems, and there were several
problems to overcome here; the very first problem is that if you have to return
the corners it cannot be done, of course we had corners on the boundaries of
the joining block of land, so we had to think how to overcome this drawback
first of all, for this it was decided that we should not build a return corner
as usual, we should treat them as separate, but we would place a corner steel
rod every course, instead of every second course, as in the wall itself.
There was also the possibly that while we were building it,
if we lean it too much it could fall on the inside, while we were building it,
so we had to strike a balance. Knowing that this first wall was going to be no
more than 3 meters high, we worked out that if we lean the wall 5 centimetre
per meter, the top of the wall was going to be about 15 centimetre back from
the perpendicular, the blocks were 19 centimetre wide and it would be okay, as
once the wall was built it could stay up on its own without falling inside, but
while we were building we should be very careful not to apply any extra weight
on the leaning wall, just for fear that this could happen we added a couple of
block piers behind the wall, this would not only make the wall safe for us while
we were building it, but it also would make the whole wall stronger.
Anyhow we built this block wall placed the reinforcing rods
in place, we also built some concrete steps on one side of it, so that if you
happened to be on the back road you would be able to go to the house, the ready
mix truck came and the wall was filled with concrete and that was the first
stage finished. We had to wait for this wall to become strong before we could
back-fill it, and then we could built another retaining wall half way the
backyard to finish the job.
Dear readers, be warned that this type of work can only done
from very experienced block layers, as it breaks all the rules in the building
trade, but we did it and it worked.
I may have to come back one day
when I feel that there is more to say, but for the time being I believe that
this hub is becoming too long, so see you in our next hub that we are going to
call, Mix your own cement.
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