Retaining wall

[Conor78]

Hi

Do retaining walls have to be signed off

I bought my house in 2011 and the retaining wall is leaning. It is 13 ft high and about 80 metres long. The builder doesn't want to know and building control are taking no part in it.

It's in N Ireland 

Thanks 

[lizzie]

I have a retaining wall of a similar size.  As far as I can remember building  control had SEcalcs and inspected at start but not finished job.

 

Our build warranty policy excludes the wall.

 

Thats a real worry for you.  I hope you can get sorted.

[Declan52]

What is it holding back??   If it is a main road or a pathway then I think it needs to have had the proper calculations done and signed of by a SE. 

Put up some pics of you have them.  It could be that there is no drainage behind the wall and the  rain and groundwater is pushing the wall out as it's no where to go. 

[Mr Punter]

It may be that it is outside of building regs but there is still a requirement that it is structurally sound, particularly if it poses a risk to people or property.

 

That is a very large wall.  I think you should ask a structural engineer to take a look and report back to you with the cause of failure and the most economical remedy.  Perhaps your buildings insurance will cover repair or rebuild costs.  Check the policy wording carefully.

[AliG]

That is a very very expensive wall.

 

I cannot imagine how it would not have been signed off by an SE.

 

@Mr Punter has given sound advice. I would get an SE to inspect it ASAP. Especially now that you have highlighted issues with it, it could well be dangerous and you would be held liable for anything that might happen if you were concerned and did not do anything about it.

 

After that I would  start to argue about who pays for it. The SE may well also be able to advise whether he thinks it should have been signed off.

 

Our SE looked at 600mm high retaining walls.

 

 

[Jeremy Harris]

We have a 3m high retaining wall behind our house, around 35m long.  We had to get an SE to design it and also needed to let BC have the SE's documents.  It was expensive, came to around £30k IIRC, plus the rendering for the finish.  Much of the cost was in the foundations, which were absolutely massive.  The wall itself was built from 215mm wide hollow concrete blocks, laid double width for the lower half, with lots of steel reinforcing bars in the hollows, which were filled with C35 concrete.  All the horizontal mortar joints also had steel reinforcement laid in them.

 

It's mandatory to get an SE to design and sign off any retaining wall over 1.2m IIRC, or something like that.  The main issue is that insurers almost certainly won't cover a wall that is 2 or 3m high unless there's an SE sign off, AFAIK.