Oh boy! Here we go again. Another retaining wall. This wall would be a block wall. I wanted it to look nice and fit in with the building, the house, and the property.
As I’ve written in the past, I have built many walls over the years. When I drive around town, I still see some of the structures and all of them are still holding up-even a couple from the late 1980’s! So the walls I am building or replacing on the property should last 25-30 years.
The reason for this wall was simple. To build the workshop at the proper level, we had to cut into the grade on the east and a little bit of the south. The deepest cut was 30″ at the southwest so the wall would start at that height and taper away from the corner until it reached level grade. Over all the wall would be 48′ on the east and 15′ on the south.
I started by staking out the lines allowing for gravel back-fill. I did have to cut back a little more into the hill but not very much. Once that was all dug out then the hard part started. Along with the wall, I needed to allow for drainage between the wall and the building. I really didn’t think there would ever be a problem but if I didn’t take care of it now and had an issue, fixing it would have been a much more difficult project.
So along side the 12″ trench for the wall footing, I dug a 4″ trench for a three inch tile (the tile sits on, and is buried in, 1″ of pea gravel and is between the footing and the building). This proved very tricky because the footing needed to be 6″ deep the whole length of the wall. To create the proper “fall” for the water to drain, the tile trench started at 4″ (ground level) and then dropped 1/8″ for each foot. That meant that at the other end of the building, the trench would have to be deeper that the wall footing. How much deeper? Math anyone? Anyone?
The 40′ trench would need to be at least 9″ deep at the far end. How many got that right?
I partitioned the trench and the footing while i was digging. The plywood left over from the workshop worked, sort of.
It’s hard to see in this picture but the 3″ tile is already buried and if you look close you can see the pea gravel covering it.
The gravel drainage is barely wide enough to walk so that’s not a permanent solution. I really felt I needed to get the wall built before winter and adding steps would have slowed the completion. I didn’t know how much time I had left before the weather changed.
One of my first spring projects will be to dig out a stairwell and set some stone steps.