Retaining Wall Installation

what's up guys I am Mike Arnold the owner of Creekside out there living here in Crown Point Indiana and this is how we install [Music] [Applause] so we've been installing retaining walls for really the inception of this company it's always been a part of our services at the very beginning of course like any company like anybody who's just starting out made some mistakes along the way and we learn from those and then we started studying and then we started reaching out to the other professionals in the industry to the point where now I would consider us to be the masters in this area for the retaining wall built now not only have we built brand new retaining walls but I can't tell you how many people have called me and said Mike somebody else installed this retaining wall and it's falling apart two-year-old this shouldn't be happening and I come out there and I can diagnose exactly why this retaining wall is falling apart a couple of reasons why retaining walls fail I would say the number one most important is improper drainage and we'll get into that but water has to be able to travel through the backfill of that that wall and then get to a place where it can exit otherwise it's going to just freeze and contract and expand push that wall over and soil is a lot of times placed directly behind a retaining wall so incorrect another reason is there is no tie back system to hold that retaining wall back into what it is retaining and then lastly I would say and frankly there's probably a lot more but the three that comes to mind the last one here is improper material not using premium grade retaining wall block like from Menards for example it's just it's just going to crumble it's going to fall apart and if the block itself fails the system fails so let's have a scenario here you've got you've got a hill and it dips off like this and then tapers off plateaus at the bottom and you have a very small yard you want to expand that space this is part of your property but you obviously can't use this unless you just want a sledding hill that's all you want to use it for but you might want to put a playground here something so we want to give you a wall so that you can have all of this b-flat and this can all be enjoyable used space so what we have to do is build a retaining wall this is not going to be just one big stick line by the way what's going to end up happening is here are the blocks so I'm just gonna draw those and so and by the way my drawing is not as good as our installations just so you know but now we are going to excavate out a foundation at the very bottom and it's going to go like this okay so now we've cut into this grade and not only are we excavating the foundation for the wall but I also need to make sure that there is enough excavation on the backside for all of my drain stone and this is actually going to come up just like that so at the very bottom we're going to and well actually we excavate out the foundation we bring in a compactor machine that is going to smack this soil extremely hard now in Northwest Indiana we've got an issue with rain and then snow and then ice and that's why we have potholes in the road is because moisture gets trapped underneath and it doesn't it doesn't percolate into the soil in time for a freeze and then there's called a freeze thaw a frost heat so the soil heaves and it drops that's what could happen here if we don't compact this soil properly so we want to bring a compact right and smack this down as good as we can and that for that we are going to line use a different color here going to line at the soil walls with a fabric reason for that is I'm going to have a lot of stone in here and this is the this is a stiff of steps sorry a step that is commonly skipped by a lot of contractors that I see and I put a fabric in here what's going to happen over time is that this soil is going to mix in with this stone to the point where it's going to be mud rock or what will happen is this whole thing will be finished off and you will start to see and you might have a wall what's is happening already but the great was here at one point and now it's here it's dip down the reason for that is that all of this dirt is going through this and that's coming out the wall erosion is taking its natural course and you are starting to have grave loss so that's one problem and we fix that by having a fabric next we're going to install start installing some of our base stone it's just going to be 3/4 inch limestone install a couple inches of that we're going to compact the absolute heck out of it and then bring in our first course of wall now this first course of wall needs to be partially buried and depending on how big the wall is will depend on how many courses or how deep the first course will be in the ground but no matter how big the wall you should always have some sort of course buried before we get to I should just erase all this this doesn't confuse anybody before we get to another course of wall we're going to install a drain tube the very very base this markers running out of ink the very very base here purpose of that is that any kind of water that can enter into this backfill this stone base is gonna get straight through it's not going to sit and wait in the soil it's gonna go ladies or shopped into this drain pipe and then obviously we will designate a destination for it but it's going to spit that out somewhere instead of having water built up here too then obviously frosty even expand and push this wall over so once I get this drink tube in here I can get somewhere of my drain stone in here now I am up to the level of that brick and I can come a little bit next I'm going to install another course maybe two maybe three depending on the block some some blocks are a lot thinner so blocks are a lot thicker so we can go one at a time two at a time before we go to the next step let's say we go to additional courses well if I've got a wall like this I need to make sure that I am holding that wall back enter in geogrid we're going to roll out its kind of a netting if you will it's going to roll this way literally towards horizontal to the wall and actually this is going to have stone up to this as well sorry I skipped that step so stone is going to be up to this level of the wall we're going to compact pack on that and then roll this out so that it's going to be sitting flush on the top of wall and on the stone then we are going to sandwich this geogrid it's almost though it's like rebar and concrete if you will it's just another step to hold that thing back I can sandwich that geogrid by adding on a couple more courses and then I bring it a bunch of stone I compact all that stone this geogrid is now secured it is rock solid and this wall is absolutely going nowhere except right there it's just going to stay right there and so on so forth until I get to the very top cell walls are two feet some walls are twenty feet and this wall I'm not really sure maybe this is about six seven feet or so once I get to the very top I'm going to install a cap a coping unit some people call it and again along the way I will have installed some more stone I'll have installed that geogrid installed some more stone and then before I get to the very very top I'm actually gonna amend this a little bit and say that the grade of the grassy attended greater the grasses about there so again remind you this is grass over here this is our soil what's going to happen is I want to full this is my fabric again remember when a full this fabric over the top of this stone now you might have grass coming all the way to this wall or if you're like some people you might want the grass to stop here and you have some landscaping here that's a possibility as well or this might not all be grass in the first place this up your retaining wall and this might be a patio or might be a driveway in which case all of this stone is serving as the foundation for whatever is up here I digress kind of going off course here but either way I want this fabric to fold over this three quarter inch stone for the same reason I don't want this stone at any point to be convoluted with anything but air water and limestone this fabric is going to then come up and let's just run into the song up scenario that this is going to be soil and it's going to be grass I'm going to add dirt I'm going to backfill the dirt in here and then we will either do sod or seed and now you have effectively grass at the very top here and this fabric again it's extremely important that this this is such a very small part of the wall with man is it important because I've seen so many walls fail because the landscaper before me and stop the fabric right here instead of curling this guy up right and just that little whip this soil starts to eroding out and goes through the joint of that wall or it goes through the joint of the cap and the wall or it starts dipping down into the stone regardless you have got to make sure this is self-contained so this is how we install our retaining walls and this is the application for really most types of if it's going to be lawn on the top or if it's going to be plants at the top or if it's going to be pavement at the top we still want to make sure that number one we're we're contacting our soil properly number two we're using quality grade either you know walk or tackle block products that is so so important this is the kind of stuff that has a lifetime guarantee on it Menards of Home Depot Lowe's does not number two or three whatever we have the proper tie backs we have the proper drainage system we have a proper fabric pull over we don't do those things this wall will fail this is why our walls you

Channel: Creekside Outdoor Living

Views: 23,148

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Id: k8WLhqmZWXA

Length: 12min 4sec (724 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020