How to Build a Retaining Wall

Retaining walls fail for a number of reasons and I want you guys and gals out there that are installing retaining walls to learn a few tips and tricks of the trade that will help you improve your installation skill, and we'll separate you from the herd. What I am going to show you at the site today is a really common reason why a retaining wall falls apart. The first thing that we look at is the choice of blocks. A lot of times, landscapers will migrate towards the cheapest block and they tend to be hollow and have a lip on the back and neck. They're solid on the top and then they're hollow on the bottom, and what happens is that water can get trapped in there between the cavity and it has nowhere to go. Then it goes through a freeze-thaw cycle, expands, contracts and pushes the blocks over. They also have an inadequate pinning system. Because they're light, they're easy to pick up and they're fast to install. You see they have their connection method...

How to Build a Boulder Retaining Wall

I'm at the base of this house, and what's happening, the issue we have today is this entire porch and the decking behind it is sliding down this hill. This is going to be about a 16-foot tall boulder retaining wall we have to build, and what's happening is it's sliding into this lake that I'm standing out on a dock on right now. We set the plan into motion about six months ago. I had an engineering firm come out here, and what we're going to be doing is we're going to be building a retaining wall to tie in with the neighbor's retaining wall starting at this point. It's going to be five foot tall and then as we go, we're going to raise this wall up to catch this porch, to save this porch from sliding in. Then the wall is going to stay at that same height and wrap around and tie into the corner of this deck. To get down here we've got to create a ramp, we've got to create a road so that we can get an excavator with a thumb down here. And...

  How to Turn a Hill into a Flat Yard with a Retaining Wall Today what we're going to be talking about is how to turn a hillside into a usable backyard. What we initially saw when I came out was a steep slope that ran directly into the back of this customer's house. It led to multiple issues; the first one was drainage. Everything on the site drained right down into their basement which created floods during heavy rains. The second was there was no room to use the yard for anything. They wanted flat enough space that they could have their kids play in the backyard.  But they also had a budget. So the solution that we came up with was to chunk it into three separate parts. The first part is excavation, which is what you see behind me right now. The second part is stabilization. Although we're creating a flat space, we're also creating more aggressive slopes on the site.  They need to be stabilized. And then the third phase of this project is...