Thinking about getting a retaining wall on side of house...

[03mustangdude]

Side of house always gets flooded and my neighbors area has a nice moat on his property for a day or 2 afterwards he doesn't really care at all but all my dirt is being washed away and closer to front of house you can almost see under slab.

I want to make a 3 tiered retaining wall along the side of the house that will be the same height as the brick to prevent future problems and the length will be 12ft.

Besides sand and concrete with the occasional rebar reinforcement would I need anything else?

Would it be best to let the water drain to my neighbor or to the front of the house via some sort of waterfall?

Any problems in my plan?

[forbes]

for a retaining wall (done right) you should do a offset spread footing.
and you need to hold it down from the weep holes along the foundation.
running it off to you neighbor may end up in a lawsuit. as that was stamped civil drawing when the house was built with elevations to accomadate the city/state requirements.
a french drain would be a better option.

[Lone Sailor]

I would hire a firm to design and draw up engineering plans for this structure according to your needs and also according to local laws, codes, and construction standards. You don't want to pay to have this installed just to have to make changes later or worse tear it down and rebuild it altogether.

[03mustangdude]

I was just thinking about doing it myself... using the bricks found at lowes/home depot.

[Lone Sailor]

That's not going to be a retaining wall then. It will just be aesthetically pleasing staggered/tiered landscaping from the sounds of it.

That said, I would be VERY careful if you are really going to be trying to put something like this together with no experience if it is going to be more than a 24" in height. The last thing you want is having it fall, albeit while someone is standing near it.

[03mustangdude]

At its highest point it should be 22" high just want it to retain the dirt not wash it away and mess wit foundation

[yellowstang]

Post a picture if you can. At our house, each lot is raised up and they have these stupid rock walls between each lot. Well, the neighbor on one side likes to water for about 38 hours straight it seems, and I get flooded on one side. Also, when it rains a lot it did the same. The builder came back and put in a french drain along the retaining wall, no more standing water.

The grass really doesn't get much sun there, so I also planted the grass for heavy shade, but that shit stays green and grows ALL year, it never stops!!! Some type of fescue I think, but it stopped the dirt erosion problem.