Rebuilding a retaining wall
 

Greetings,

My father is rebuilding a retaining wall and it's not going well. He got a bid of 15k to redo it for him... that's out of the question so he started on his own.

The first thing he did was to remove the stones. Now he's trying to dig all the rock away. However, the rock keeps cascading down into the trench he's trying to dig (making it annoying for everyone involved).

Do any of you have any suggestions about how to handle this? Better yet, do any of you know anything about how this should be handled?

How far away from the original wall site is he trying to build the new wall? Has he removed enough of the original material to create a drainage zone? Has he run a compactor over the area?

He's trying to build the wall right over where the old one was. He hasn't done any of the compacting yet because he can't dig the ditch thanks to the aforementioned rock. That in mind, I'd say he hasn't removed enough yet to put in the new drain tiles.

It turns out, when the first wall was built, they used plastic to lay around the drain tiles so that no water could reach them. Over a few years (10) that became a problem.

No offense but this sounds like a clusterfuck in motion. Depending on the height and the type of soil he's dealing with there's a possiblity he's going to need some serious earth moving, deadheads (no not music fans) and proper drainage.

Doing something like this yourself without getting well educated could lead to making the problem worse as well as injury.

Is there anyway to get a professional to at least lay out a plan of attack? Might be able to get someone knowledgeable to survey the situation and give advice without paying for all the labor etc... Thus allowing him to attack the problem more logically.

Yeah, Tully, I agree with you completely.

The problem is, my father is a bit stubborn of a man and feels like he can still do this kind of stuff on his own. He knows a lot about doing this kind of thing, but he's not exactly young anymore (he's in his 60s). I would have, at the least, tried to get someone to meet him halfway but it looks like I'm his slave-labor for the time-being.

That's what sons are for, right?

Yep! that's what sons are for alright. The best I can think of is do a lot of research and present it in a non-threatening "I know more then you" way and hope he listens. I built a 15' X 75' wall one time. I did research and had it all planned out. I kind of figured it would take a couple weeks (weekends and evenings.) Two and half months later and three full days of backhoe rental later it was done. Ok, it took me half of one of those days to learn how to run the freaking backhoe. At any rate I wouldn't do it again, 15K sounds cheap to me and I don't even know how big of wall you're talking about.

Do your research, present it carefully and hope he'll listen. If he doesn't... well as the rental car lady says to Steve Martin in "Planes, Trains and Automobiles... "You're fucked."


Best of luck to you.

Sometimes you get what you pay for. Retaining walls are serious business. Any advice on this board should only be in the form of people advice, not building the wall advice. There's no way enough could be presented here to help with the actual building!

predecon

it depends on many things

- the height of the retaining walls
- the type of material used to build the wall
- the type of soil behind the wall
- the live forces that will have an overturning effect on the wall(ie. water, soil, wind?)
- the type of footing used for the wall
- the type of drainage you have behind the wall.

if you email me a sketch of what you intend to do i may be able to give u a plan of attack.

i studied construction management at uni as well as a full year of soil mechanics.

but disclaimer: i am NOT and engineer.

good luck!