A retaining wall is one that holds back an area of elevated ground from a building or part of the plot, either above the proposed house or below it. Quite often the wall will be instrumental in supporting a road above the site. As the availability of plots becomes trickier to find, more often the available plots are on sloping ground, which may require a retaining wall.
At the very start of this topic, an important point must be made - the build of retaining walls is critical and must be designed properly and must then be built to the design. Hence, we cannot here give too much information on the build as it depends on the design. We have included this page to give an idea of what is involved.
Your architect will not be able to design a retaining wall - as it requires calculations for load etc. it must be designed by an engineering company - your archtiect will be able to recommend one.
Retaining walls for self-build tend to be one of two types. A reinforced masonry design which may be a double leaf concrete block structure with steel mesh (also called fabric) in the cavity and filled with concrete. Another design is blocks on flat, 5 or six blocks width at the base and gradually reducing in width towards the top. This is going out of favour and will not often be designed by an engineering company as there is the possibility of shearing between courses.
The pressure on a wall can be extreme, caused by pressure from the ground, the weight of water that may lie behind the wall and by ground movement exacerbated by water build up behind the wall. So there is an emphasis on reducing the water that may gather behind the wall - minimising the water that is retained behind the wall by backfilling with clean stone and by ensuring that any water drains away well via weep holes and/or a land drain.
Further description on types of retaining wall are described by Retaining Walls UK, in their page Types of Retaining Wall The following pictures illustrate some features of a retaining wall of the reinforced masonry design. - click on the photos for a larger view|
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