Retaining Wall question / foundations type of thing

[RandomMess]

So we need the retaining wall for a garden rebuilding as it's damaged, angling outwards with the pressure of the soil etc.

One option is to build the new wall in front of the existing wall.

One of the people who quoted didn't want to do that because of the weight that the old wall would place but I assumed once all the space was back filled where there were gaps it wouldn't make any difference????

I agree with you build another wall in front o the existing wall. then if you back filled it with cement then your retaining wall would be twice as thick maybe even when digging footing put in some steel rods in to reinforce the whole thing. you didn't mention how tall the wall is.

You will need to get a Structural Engineer to calculate what the depth (front to back) of the wall should be and the height of it in order to support the soil. I have never heard of anyone building a second wall! Not a good idea. Get the calculations done professionally. A builder just will not do in this situation and has no qualifications to give you advice.

I mean build a 2nd wall as a complete replacement for the original one just not bother removing the bricks of the first one.

The plan is to go very deep with the foundations!!!!

You still do not know what size of wall you need . You must get calculations done and deep foundations are not the only thing that matters here. It is the actual construction of the wall - ask a qualified professional. It won't be cheap so get it right.

I don't think building a new wall with the existing wall in situ and back-filling would be a good idea. You won't be alleviating any of the pressure that is causing the wall to fail and you'll have no drainage so it'll only get worse.

Disclaimer: I'm not a structural engineer but we are in the same position with a retaining boundry wall which is leaning, and unfortunately our responsibility (even though we are the lower side).

We have had a couple of engineers look at the wall, and options we are looking into are anchoring the wall using a specialist contractor (£££) or taking down and rebuilding from scratch (££££££). As the latter would involve digging up a huge chunk of our neighbours landscaped gardens I am hoping option one will be doable.

If we anchor the wall, it will be guaranteed so good for insurance purposes, and we'll be able to build a straight single skin brick wall in front of it to hide everything as long as we channel the drainage somehow.

If your wall is a boundary wall you'll also need to consider party wall act.

It's not a boundary wall it's in the middle of our sloping garden.

The mind boggles and how you anchor the wall - what do you anchor it to???

The original wall has completely broken in places as well as leaning.

Depth/width of the wall has been mentioned. The garden is narrow thankfully!!!! From memory we were going to have drainage etc.

I really don't understand the difference in mass between leaving the original wall in situ and taking it out and it being soil instead...

This is an image of the type of helical wall anchors we are looking into. This may not be appropriate if the wall is broken and damaged in places I guess. Fortunately for you its not a boundary wall which takes away a load of aggro.

If you were to remove the wall and rebuild you'd also remove a wedge of soil and replace with gravel or similar to improve drainage and reduce a great deal of the pressure bearing down on the wall.

The current wall is utterly hideous, I certainly don't want to keep.

I guess I really need to consider the wall which is a boundary one and whether we actually go the whole hog and get that one looked as well. Unfortunately there is a self rooted young tree in the garden below and I do think it could be the cause of future/speeding up any subsidence but you know I just don't want the hassle/potential conflict of speaking to that neighbour.

Guess I need to find out whose wall it is/responsibility it is etc - arghhhhhhhhh why is nothing ever simple/straightforward and so on.

Have googled some local structural engineers, give me a few years and I have got around to getting it down! Several of the neighbours actually have drainage gaps built into their retaining walls...