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no concrete foundation under the retaining wall?
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no concrete foundation under the retaining wall?
-Tyler-
Nope - it gets compacted road base. Where these 3 blocks are the ground used to be under the driveway and is is rock hard. Not too worried about it here as the stack will only be 2 blocks high here.
ah, so pretty short. What's the highest the wall will end up being?
-Tyler-
4' tall at the highest point - 9 blocks at 6" tall each - one will be below grade. As I get toward that area the road base will be 5-6" compacted as well. There will also be a drain pipe along the back with drain rock on top.
Placed a bunch more yesterday... Starting to dig deeper now and increase the compacted road base underneath...Getting the lower course dead level takes quite a bit of time.
This is almost 1 pallet...only 39 more to go....
These blocks are a killer deal up here right now. $1.50 CAD each taxes in. 12" x 6" x 12"
Attachment 519
Made some more progress on the retaining wall... This equals 7200lbs of blocks so far...or about 30% of this one particular wall.
Attachment 521
Attachment 520
Also met some new neighbors...Not particularly afraid of humans it seems.. They were just standing on the sidewalk about 6 feet from my truck.
Attachment 522
Last edited by V8-190e; 2016.06.13 at 09:11 AM.
Up to 60'placed now...
Attachment 525
Well all the blocks are placed for the first wall - all 32,000 lbs worth.. Just need to finish putting the caps on and fill behind the wall with drain rocks. Then we can work on making our place look less like a gravel pit and redo the driveway finally.
Attachment 526
Attachment 528
We also started on enlarging the flat plateau down near the lower part of the lot. There will be another 4' high wall down here as well. We will be cutting back into the hillside another 4-5' or so. Basically pulling the earth out of the hillside and using it to level and expand the flat area. Before we started the flat area was only about 8' wide at the widest point and was sloped side to side as well as with the slope. We are hoping to end up with a nice flat grass space about 25' x 70'.
Attachment 529
Attachment 527
Finished placing another wall on the weekend... this one is beside the garage where I eventually plan to park my truck. There will be another wall set back some from this one bringing the plateau on top up to grade with the rest of the driveway above. It will be a flat space about 15' wide and 20' long up top when complete. That is 19 of the 40 pallets of blocks used up now.
The white pipe on the right will be connected to the rain water run off up above. The black pipe to the bottom left is a filtered drain pipe for behind the wall. Both will be covered with backfill after they are extended down to their connection points with the sewer.
Attachment 530
-Tyler-
One of the new parking areas is getting close...
Attachment 534
Finished putting the caps on the driveway wall. It is all back filled with drain rock and done!
Attachment 536
The lower yard area that we are expanding got a big bump this weekend. The main 60' long retaining wall is roughly 1/2 done. Of the 40 pallets of blocks we bought originally we now only have 12 left.
Attachment 537
In the bottom pic you can really see how much more usable space we will have.
Before:
Attachment 539
So far:
Attachment 538
that's a lot of hard work! nicely done
-Tyler-
Busy weekend... My wife and I hand shoveled 10 yards of top soil into a track dumper machine and drove it down to our lower yard area. We also placed 30 of the 75lb caps on the lower wall. Pretty tiring even with the machine to move loads. I think we went up and down about 25 trips.
This is about 4 yards of the soil.
Attachment 541
Driving the track machine/dumper down with dirt - pretty steep - the elevation drop from where the dirt was to where it went is probably 65-70'
Attachment 544
Soil placed and roughly raked into position. We are going to try and grow grass here.
Attachment 543
And a view from the yard area above the new space.
Attachment 542
We only have 2 more retaining walls to go! 1 is pretty small and the other is similar to the parking pad one. I can see the end in sight which is super exciting because once they are done it is new driveway time. Then finally there will be "car time" again.
Taking a bit of a break from the never ending retaining walls while it is nice and sunny to rebuild the 3 decks that were nasty and a bit rotten.
Decks before:
Attachment 549
No wonder they felt a bit crunchy in some spots
Attachment 547
Stripped all the old plywood and replaced all the suspect joists
Attachment 550
I hope to have all the plywood on by tomorrow night as the vinyl surface guys are coming on Friday...
We also finally got around to finishing putting on all the new wood stairtreads
Attachment 548
Those decks over a roof? Is that why plywood?
-Tyler-
Yep - there are 3 in row vertically. The top one has no roof but the middle and bottom have a the deck above as a roof.
All 3 decks have been rebuilt, "re-plywooded" and new 70 mil vinyl installed - not something I want to do again...sooo much work. New railings have been ordered but may take up to 4 weeks which sucks. One of the decks is getting new siding so we stripped off the old and replaced the ripped tar paper with Tyvek instead.
Attachment 551
Attachment 552
Railings were finished early! I installed 2 of the 3 today between the rain.
Attachment 553
sexy
-Tyler-
Control your excitement!
It is nice to have the decks be usable finally.
We started on the base for the last retaining wall finally this weekend - kind of required a bigger commitment as we had to pull the front steps completely off to do it properly. So access only through the garage for now till the wall is done, the driveway is redone and then the new stairs built.
That's an amazing amount of work done! You got an IV drip of Red Bull going, or what?
“Religion is a defense against the experience of God.”
— C.G. Jung
Well I'll take that as a compliment! It is a stupid amount of work when I look back on what we got done this summer. Trying to get the last wall done and back filled so we can pave the driveway before the weather turns nasty for a few months.
Last big retaining wall done and back filled! Of the 40 pallets/2000 blocks we bought I now have 36 blocks left in the garage...
Added a decent sized sump for the 18" drain grill. As of today all the old cracked driveway is gone and if all goes well with adding more gravel and a few more details we will be ready to pave in the next week. When done we will be up from +/- 750 sqft of driveway to 2300. Will be a much better parking situation for us and guests....and project cars....and the kids playing hockey/roller blading etc...and it not looking like a dump
Attachment 557
Adding a channel drain in front of the garage door as well - the old drain 4" corrugated pipe was crushed flat and full of dirt. Not surprising it backed up in heavy rains.
Attachment 560
Attachment 558
Also no surprise that the driveway was as cracked as it was with all these roots right underneath.
Attachment 559
Last edited by V8-190e; 2016.09.26 at 13:02 PM.
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