CCA retaining wall and deck giving me nightmares!

[ThrottleJockey]

Someone requested that I post some pics of a few walls I've built, unfortunately many have been lost for various reasons. I did find some decent photos of 2 different jobs/walls. These were taken in the early days of digital cameras so the quality isn't the best and I'm not a photographer so they won't win any photo contests! There is one residential job that was originally much smaller and built with timbers. It had been torn out and restacked several times over the years and I came in with the final solution. The other job was a commercial job at a big condominium complex in Minneapolis near the 3M headquarters. Man was that one a PITA. Everything about it was cramped and tight, there were gas lines, fiber lines, power lines, water lines, city streets, curbs, trees....ugh. Again this was a tear out and replacement of another wall that had failed 3 times in 10 years. In almost every tear out I've done the previous wall had failed due to cutting corners, skipping steps, people underbidding a job and skimping on materials, etc. Anyone can make a wall look pretty (for a short time) but they fail to realize that the wall also has a pretty big job to do and never gets to take a break. I always laugh when someone hires the lowest bidder and has to pay for it several times...I also laugh almost every time I see someone building one, just in passing I can tell how long it will last before failure. I had hoped that I could find more pics outlining the process as I wanted to explain a few of the steps better, like the most important and time consuming step....base course, and the one nearly nobody knows about...geo-grid, and the backfilling process. One all important thing to remember is that retention walls have two enemies, Water and Time. Without drain tile and proper backfill, water will destroy a wall in a very short time!

Okay, enough with the speech, here is a link to a photobucket album I just created and loaded the pics to. ENJOY!
Block Walls

 

[Joel_BC]

Those project pics show some beautiful work, TJ! Thanks.

 

[~gd]

Those project pics show some beautiful work, TJ! Thanks.

Could not help but notice the keystones were installed backwards. If the soil pushes they will be gone. If you are ever out this way I woulld like to show you some timber walls that date back to the civiil war' You are a Pro and better than many but I suspect the old timers knew some tricks that you haven;t learned yet. Don't know where your are, but here in the sandhills of NC run of mill the bolders go for $1/pound at the landscape supply store. Much cheaper if you will take a whole truckload.

 

[ThrottleJockey]

Those project pics show some beautiful work, TJ! Thanks.

Could not help but notice the keystones were installed backwards. If the soil pushes they will be gone. If you are ever out this way I woulld like to show you some timber walls that date back to the civiil war' You are a Pro and better than many but I suspect the old timers knew some tricks that you haven;t learned yet. Don't know where your are, but here in the sandhills of NC run of mill the bolders go for $1/pound at the landscape supply store. Much cheaper if you will take a whole truckload.

No, these are engineered blocks with a lip on the back that hangs down behind the course under them. There is also Geo-Grid every 3 courses extended 16' behind the wall where there is space, where there isn't it goes as far as space allows. There are also 3 buried courses on top of heavily compacted class 5 packed in nearly a foot except on one part of the commercial wall pictured where we experimented with green concrete. We were working with the engineers that designed the block on that one. These blocks are also core filled with 2-3" minus and have a 3' barrier of 4"minus behind the wall for proper drainage. These blocks will crumble to dust before they fail. I rarely used them but there are also blocks that use 3/4" fiberglass pins to hold them from sliding front to back. The top course is just cap glued to the actual block. I've even built walls where the base course and part of the wall are under water on shorelines, that is a whole different game all together. I actually worked with a couple manufactures on design improvements and as stated earlier have done field testing for them. If you've ever worked with the 60# Windsor blocks that come from Menards, I had a hand in the current design and installation recommendations...As far as boulders go, I have sources for them where I would pay $125 per side dump load and usually used 3s and 4s. #1s were $80 per load because they were easier to load...The land in MN tends to be a bit rockier thus greater avail. of them, that may be why there will be regional price variations. Up there stones are sold at landscape centers by the size rather than the weight but we bought wholesale from the suppliers.

 

[ThrottleJockey]

Man, $1 a pound...That's ridiculous! Figure a 4 can easily weigh over 1000 pounds...I'll bet there aren't many boulder walls in your area!

 

[~gd]

Man, $1 a pound...That's ridiculous! Figure a 4 can easily weigh over 1000 pounds...I'll bet there aren't many boulder walls in your area!

You Win! I expect that is why they call this area the sandhills! Heck I have to buy broken bricks to have something to throw at the varmits. Bolders are sometimes bought as accents by people that like to show that they have money. It is so bad they had to build a moat around a old civil war site that used to produce cannon balls for the Confederates. The stones for the furnance were floated up the river on barges and that is how the balls were snuck out. River was too shallow for gunboats and narrow enough that a few riflemen on the shores could discourage visitors. Even after Lee surendered the Yankees never made it up the river otherwise it would have been destroyed.~gd