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Retaining wall options


deuce22

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Hi.

 

I have been researching for the different retaining wall options and wanted to get some feedback from what others have done.

 

I was originally thinking of Gabion baskets as it was something I could do myself and so I would save on the labour costs. I have now come across mortar free gravity retaining walls and have been told that these are pretty straight forward to do. 

 

Has anybody built a retaining wall from this and do they perform well?

 

Thanks.

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Do you mean this type of retaining wall???

If so they are pretty easy to build. They require no concrete just a well compacted hardcore base. And then it's just lift and set down and lift and set down. The back of the blocks have a lip so they can't push of the bottom block. 

Depending on how high you need to go will dictate the size of the blocks you need. The small ones in my front garden can go to 0.9m and that's it. The bigger ones can go to a few metres if you build in membranes along the way.

Like all walls like this you need a drain at the back to get rid of any water plus plenty of clean stone like pea gravel to backfill it all in.

Screenshot_2020-02-03-12-29-23-459_com.google.android.apps.photos.jpg

Screenshot_2020-02-03-12-29-14-427_com.google.android.apps.photos.jpg

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I had this discussion with my architect last week. We require a couple retaining walls in the region of 2.5m high. The engineers design for reinforced concrete look scary and expensive. However, the interlocking block option works out more expensive and much more time consuming at that scale. Same for gabions, as you end up with a wall just as thick as it is high.

 

 

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2 minutes ago, Conor said:

I had this discussion with my architect last week. We require a couple retaining walls in the region of 2.5m high. The engineers design for reinforced concrete look scary and expensive. However, the interlocking block option works out more expensive and much more time consuming at that scale. Same for gabions, as you end up with a wall just as thick as it is high.

 

 

 

We found the same,  especially the space taken up by the wall.  We opted for a reinforced concrete filled hollow block retaining wall, that's nearly 3m high at the highest point.  The main advantage was that it gave us about 1m more width which pretty much translated directly 1m more width in the house, because space was tight on the plot in that direction.

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2 minutes ago, Conor said:

I had this discussion with my architect last week. We require a couple retaining walls in the region of 2.5m high. The engineers design for reinforced concrete look scary and expensive. However, the interlocking block option works out more expensive and much more time consuming at that scale. Same for gabions, as you end up with a wall just as thick as it is high.

 

 

It would be the quickest method by far off doing a small retaining wall. I done that large wall in a few hours. It's about 15m long by 1.2m high. Once you go over that height then you need to be backfilling as you go which will really slow you down plus building in the membrane. 

You could step it so have 2 walls at 1.2m. much the same as I done with my front garden but move them closer together.

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  • 4 months later...

Get a ground investigation and soils analysis. The aim is to determine the beneficial support inherent in the soils. There is strong possibility that the ground is sufficiently resilient for you to batter back (creating a steep slope rather than a vertical face) and use one of the interlocking precast concrete block systems. It will be way cheaper than a concrete wall. I saw one recently that I am fairly sure was Betoconcept that has planting pockets too.
 

.

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