Boulder Retaining Wall Project

[Dobish]

When we bought our house, it had a deck, part of a railing that was partially attached to the deck, and a concrete wall that ended the lawn. from there, it was sort of a jumbled mess of what obviously used to be a nice tiered garden, but hadn't been touched for 20 years.

Well, the deck fell off, and then we were left with a giant useless space, some dog crap, some ugly plants, and a lot of trash. I started digging around and found part of an old stone wall. In the process, I decided that I should probably just rip out the lilacs. after that, i got a truck full of dirt and started filling in a little bit of the space.

The tree that was leaning over where the deck used to be had to go.... but that was a different adventure... a lot of digging, swearing, and name calling at 9pm, we got this guy out.

Then i got a load of dirt delivered....

then i started digging (picture taken before tree removal):

and digging...

and then putting rocks there...

and i'm not done yet, but i'm making progress....



I had to stop to build a gate and put in some pretty flowers, and cut down a few trees with a friend.... not going to pass up 5 free trees when I needed a break from shoveling!

 

[semipro]

That's some tough work building a wall with rocks that size.
I'm working on a rock stairway now with somewhat smaller rocks and its about to kill me.

 

[velvetfoot]

I know 2 guys that got hernias moving rocks, and that was when they were in their 20's.

 

[Dobish]

Just roped my sister in law into helping move the dirt. I uncovered another few boulders, but we got the rest of the dirt moved. I'm going to try and level it a bit more but it feels good to get the dirt out of there. At least now I can drive the truck to where I need to dump it.

 

[Dobish]

got it all leveled off, and i still have a small section to finish, but that won't be that hard... after i get the rocks!

i put the raised beds up there yesterday, and got a ton of sand that I laid down in preparation of the flagstone patio. All in all, it was 27 yards of dirt, 3 tons of rocks, 1.08 tons of sand, and I don't even know how many hours of digging and building. Total cost right now: $36 (not including the gate, but that goes under the "i needed to fix the fence" budget.

 

[begreen]

Very respectable job in all ways considering the tonnage moved, the small budget and the final outcome. Take a break and have a cool one.

 

[Dobish]

lets just hope it holds up to the test of time. I may end up re-doing it in a few years due to the soils settling, but we will see. I didn't have as much gravel as i would have liked for backfill, so i am a little worried at over time, the soil will find its way into the nooks and crannies. We will see what happens!

 

[sportbikerider78]

I had an employee that worked for me for some time. He built retaining walls for a living in a past life and he quoted me a wall for my property. He said that if there is no barrier between the dirt and the structure holding the dirt back, it will fail. For my application by a driveway, he would put a fiber/geotextile barrier behind the rock wall, fill with crushed gravel, then road base,,,and finally what ever native material was in place already. He spoke of the wall as a way to disperse water the best, rather than a structural barrier. Very different than what I would have thought of...but something to consider.

It might make a great deal of sense to consult someone who knows their stuff, to see if you need to put drainage between the native soil and the rocks.

 

[Dobish]

I had an employee that worked for me for some time. He built retaining walls for a living in a past life and he quoted me a wall for my property. He said that if there is no barrier between the dirt and the structure holding the dirt back, it will fail. For my application by a driveway, he would put a fiber/geotextile barrier behind the rock wall, fill with crushed gravel, then road base,,,and finally what ever native material was in place already. He spoke of the wall as a way to disperse water the best, rather than a structural barrier. Very different than what I would have thought of...but something to consider.

It might make a great deal of sense to consult someone who knows their stuff, to see if you need to put drainage between the native soil and the rocks.

There is a lot of loose stuff and I was thinking about where the water will end up. The soils are really a lot of clay, so they swell a lot. There is gravel and river rock back there, as well as broken concrete and bricks, but time will tell. I jumped on every stone, and made sure the didn't budge

 

[sportbikerider78]

^^ Video or it didn't happen.

 

[begreen]

This wall went up seven years ago. It's not budging in my lifetime (I hope). Dirt filled.

 

[Highbeam]

Quite a lot of batter (lean) on that rockery. This can cause it to blow out at the toe. Keep an eye on the bottom of it. I have had excellent luck backfilling with dirt, not gravel. To be fair I would never purposely allow or direct water to run over the face of the wall.

 

[Dobish]

it actually looks like there is more batter in the corner than there is. it sort of starts to curve around a little bit, so its a bit deceiving. Most of the lower rocks are big ones, buried about 1/2 way into the ground. They also weigh in the 250+lb range and are double wide. Lots of rubble behind them towards the bottom. Average wall thickness is about 2' with a few deadmen in there to hold it back. There are a few concrete curb stops buried back in there, and it is graded so the minimal water that we get there will be going the other direction towards the big pine tree.