Retaining walls and drainage...

[Chritaka]

I know Junior used to do this type of stuff, but since he's not anymore, does anyone else have a contact? We've got some draining issues in the backyard that's causing some bad erosion. I know I'll have to bring in a good chunk of dirt to rebuild what's eroded. I'd like to build a small retaining wall and deck the top of it with some stone as well. I was going to tackle this myself this summer, but I'm questioning whether I need a pro to assess the drainage first. I don't want to make things worse... I can post pics later if that will help.

[ceyko]

Might get some free advice/opinions if you post pics of the problem area.

You could do like we did and include drainage in the retaining wall. Helps put the water where we want it and gets it out of the wall. (once it's all fixed up the way you want it.)

[Chritaka]

I'll get some pics of it tonight. My new Thump RRR tensioner came in yesterday, so I was installing that and replacing a pulley with a bad bearing. Course I had to test drive it. haha Ya, I had thought I may need to put a drainage pipe inside the retaining wall like you mentioned. The other problem is I'll need to build it so that I can still get to my water sprinkler valves on the corner of the house, which is close to the main erosion area...

[Chritaka]

Here are some pics:







My plan was to build about a 2 ft retaining wall extending out from the enclosed patio to the trees in front of it. Then wrapping it back to the sides of the patio (like wings if you will), getting rid of the wooden deck on the left and extending to the shed on the right. I want to also extend a single level of stone around the trees in front to redo and incorporate that flower bed/trees. This would give us a good deck area (we can't get grass to grow here with our trees) while at the same time fixing the drainage issues at the right (the exposed sprinkler system PVC). I would have to devise a way to work around the 3 valves on the right corner though so they are still accessible. I was thinking about leaving a hollow pocket there, maybe reinforce the edges with cinder blocks, fill in around the outsides of it, then lay paving stone, etc over the top.

I was wanting to use something like this for the retaining wall stone:

[Chritaka]

90vert came out yesterday and shot the elevations for me. He also spent a good amount of time with me analyzing all the drainage/erosion problems with the property. I was impressed with his knowledge and the fact that his solutions were able to tackle the immdediate problem now, then I could tie into these later if need be to improve some other areas of the property. He's going to put everything to paper and get me some pricing on my options. I'll update later with the progress... Special thx to Jamie (90vert) for coming out on a Sun. to take a look.