What I don't understand is why is it eroding up against the house. Have you checked to make sure the gutters aren't clogged up? I have a slope like this on the one side of my house and it is sloped to the lawn and I don't have any eroding against the house.

it looks more like its settling at the house.. rather than eroding away .... how old is the house???

is that the front door.. this might be a brilliant solution to the problem .... but also quite an impact ...

it is well within the DIY scope ... if you dont mind hoiking around a lot of HEAVY retaining wall ... its not the first hundred that are all that bad ... lol.. its the second third and 4 hundreth that might kill you ... lol ...

done properly.. the first course if fully or at least half underground ... and leveling that course.. is the only real problem .. if that is made level.. all other courses are simply piled on top ... as you drive around.. start looking at DIY walls ... you can easily tell ... who set the first course level ....

then there is the issue of cutting bricks ...though you may end out near the lawn staggered ... at the foundation .. every other course will need to be half brick ...

then after all that.. you will need a lot of backfill ... and wheelbarrowing soil on a hill can be tricky and exhausting ...

do you have any idea ... why there is that wall cement .. next to the porch???

ken

Thanks everyone!!

The cement is actually my foundation/wall of my garage. My garage goes underneath the house since we are on a slope. The front door is near the high end of the slope.

The house is only about 15 years old. I think this started so quickly because I noticed the dirt was covering the siding so I dug it away from the siding (only about six inches in one spot) to prevent issues like termites. I think now the water flow is all disrupted since I did that so it's eroding next to the house.

Just a few more thoughts if you are considering DIYing.

You won't actually need that much backfill, because you're basically redistributing the soil from a tilted plane to a series of steps. When all is said and done, you might need a bit of nice soil to top off the beds, but it doesn't look like that would be a major effort.

The trickiest part will be how to end the wall at the lawn. I'd suggest looking at lots of photos to get ideas. You can taper the walls down until they meet the lawn surface, or you can put a big chunky stone to end the wall with an exclamation point, or you could build a stone border that separates the bed from the garden and tie each terrace into that. Consider how much work and craft you feel like putting into it.

Last thought: think carefully about what material you'll use. Your house is so cute, I'd favor natural stone. It's quite a bit more time consuming, because you have to find the right stones to match up. I find that addictively fun, but lots of people don't. :)

Karin thanks so much for your advice, that gives me a lot to consider. I'll have to look at our neighbor's house because their garden is terracedand was built that way originally, plus their house and ours was built at the same exact time by the same builder:)

do you not have gutters up there??? .. and if so.. how are you getting all that water right there????

ken

The problem is that the grading of the bed was changed when the section next to the house was dug out. It used to drain away from the house. Now it drains towards the house. Not good. We had a similar problem when the original buried downspout pipes collapsed.

Somehow, the grade has to be changed so that the entire bed slopes away from the house. Whether or not retaining walls are involved is a different matter.

I was thinking the same thing as mad_gallica. Unless you fix the drainage, making terraces will just lead to soggy flat areas, keeping the water near the house

Haha we have gutters Ken, mine actually recently got cleaned so I know that's not the problem. I think I just dig away too much dirt near the siding so now the problem is compounding itself

Good point everyone brought up of making sure the terraces angle away from the house :) I had thought of it but hadn't put it down in writing, at least I had one instinct that was good lol

You also had the good instinct to get the dirt off of the siding!

Walls of curved terracing are only going to look good if their curves are of uniform degree and they're level. If you follow a plan such as the curved walls in the third picture, the right end of each wall will tie back into grade and die there. You won't want to extend the wall close to grade and then have it end abruptly (still sticking above the earth) or have its top surface pitch at a nose dive in order to connect with grade. Where the wall top meets grade, it could end with a larger stone such that it's appearing to meet a pillar, which, of course, is entirely buried except for its top surface. (To have the wall end in a larger stone would make it look stronger.)

I have a couple of retaining walls curved on a slope with a big rock at the end of each one, and it’s made it difficult to mow there. I hate using the trimmer so it ends up looking pretty messy most of the time. If I were to do it again, I’d have the retaining wall end at ground level where it hits the grass.

Just wanted to comment that if you do a DIY project the advise to keep the retaining wall very low would be good to heed. I see many walls where stones, both large and small, are stacked by builders or homeowners and after some years their instability really shows. On that slope there is a significant mass of earth that will be pushing downhill against your wall. Any serious height to that wall would need a qualified stonemason to do a job that will stand the test of time. Here is an example. You see in the picture below the top stones have been pushed over time and are looming over the stones underneath. I just had a friend who had to redo his walls made of large boulders that he said had moved more than 2 feet.

wow thanks Deanna!! that's a massive move!

I was going to try to keep the walls about 1.5 feet, 2 feet max. Would that be a good assumption to make or should I go even shorter?

You are going to have to figure out the grading in advance. I *think* you are going to end up extending the regrading well into the lawn to get it right. Anything higher than a foot, and you probably want to look at a manufactured interlocking block system.

I don't know the general cut off, but I "feel" like 1.5 would be max for sure. 1' sounds good. If it's a DIY it might be better to do several 1' walls instead of a couple of taller walls. Many people will say they did it taller and it looks great, etc., and they're right. But, it might not look great in 15-20 years. Wish I had more detailed info, but I don't!