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Landscape Design

Decorative retaining wall using cinder block

9 years ago

Hello,

I am getting ready to build a decorative retaining wall around my patio and I would like to use cinder block that is faced with natural stone. My question is... in Pennsylvania, for a 3' tall cinder block wall that will not be under any load (not holding back soil), do I need to lay a concrete footer or can I use compacted crushed stone as my base material? If so, what are the steps taken for this, how deep should I go, and where and when to use rebar reinforcements. Thank you for any help.

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Yardvaark
9 years ago
If the wall is not holding back an earth load, it's not a retaining wall. It's a freestanding wall. You'll need a concrete footing, 8" depth (thickness,) whose base is below the frost line and whose width is double the combined width of all masonry that sits on it (block + stone.) You'll need rebar, embedded in the footing that continues to the top of the wall, every other block. The cells through which the rebar pass will be filled with concrete. Use truss or ladder mesh at every other course. While most of the illustrations and videos about building a cmu wall are for building structures, the principles are the same, so adapt for your needs.
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If I'm seeing it correctly, it looks like the damage runs from about the stanchion to the right of the hose on the chain, to the stanchion two over to the left, the one about even with the house corner. Starting from the concrete stairs to the left, and the planter to the right, it's fine. What's causing the runoff in that middle section? That's the cause of the problem. Is there a flow of water when it rains coming past the hot tub and then down the wall? Does the roof there have gutters? Or does a downspout somewhere up to the right (in the direction of the ladder) empty on the concrete and then run down to the wall? One approach to consider is to divert water flow so that it doesn't run down the wall. Absent being able to do that, I'd have someone cut a slit in the concrete walkway and dig in and install a channel drain parallel to and maybe one or two feet inbound from the wall's edge. I'd empty it using some kind of a spout connection protruding from the wall. It looks like there's a break in the planters just under the stanchion at the left side of the damage, that might be a good place to put it (so that it doesn't flow into the planter area and flood it) .
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