How We Back-fill Retaining Walls

Our Recent Retaining Wall Work

In order to do a St George retaining wall right, you have to understand what is essential to making certain it stands for years and years, despite the elements that will attack it. Here’s the process we use to do retaining walls.

The main cause for failure in a wall is due to poor drainage, poor drainage that results in saturated soil and frost, which both lead to retaining walls failing. That’s why we begin all retaining walls with landscape fabric, backfill, and perforated drainpipe.

Digging a St George Retaining Wall

The details behind the digging: The depth that we’ll excavate to will depend on the frost depth that we need to meet. If the walls are mortared or concrete, in areas where they encounter a lot of frost, we make certain that the footings are below the frost line. If the wall isn’t mortared we build them on gravel-filled trenches that have been dug below the frost line as well.

Some places where it doesn’t freeze means you can just scrape away the topsoil, create your base and go for it. Even living here, St George retaining walls need to be overdone rather than underdone to ensure that despite the fact that it doesn’t freeze very often, it does sometimes. That’s why you need an experienced contractor like Creative Excavating to help ensure your retaining walls are build to the best and highest standards. There would be few things worse than a retaining wall failing and all that dirt and rock coming into your front room!

Once we have built the base we’ll add landscape fabric (show in the pictures) that will contain the new gravel. Then we’ll begin the backfilling by replacing the native soil with gravel, we’ll then grade it so it slopes correctly to allow water to drain. Then add the pipe to allow additional drainage.

We’ll then add the soil on top of that and compact it as necessary. Understandably every retaining wall is slightly different, but this gives you an idea as to the process we’ll go through to make certain your subdivision, or your backyard is built to last for generations. If you have additional questions continue reading on our St George excavation page.

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