Cement Bag Retaining Wall

[WoodChuckDad]

That worked out great, good work.:thumbsup: I have used sack walls for ditch bank repairs on irrigation ditches and they work very well. I considered using the sacks for retaining walls on customer properties but found the stackable block to be close enough in price. I get the 62 lb. retaining wall block delivered up in the mountain sites for $3.50/block. Here are a few pics of a retaining wall we built early this year.

That is a great looking wall. When I build the things we will need up at the homesite, I will probably go that route.

 

[jenkinsph]

That is a great looking wall. When I build the things we will need up at the homesite, I will probably go that route.

Thanks. That wall is about 180 feet long, picture shows about half of it. 2200 pavers on 44 pallets IIRC lots of work.

I just ordered 6 pallets of 50lb. sacks for a ranch irrigation project I am doing. These smaller sacks are a lot easier to handle and actually worked out a little cheaper than 80 lb. sacks. Who would have thought that. It makes a huge difference in how fast the labor can stack the banks with the lighter weight. Easier on everyone and my wallet too.

 

[WoodChuckDad]

Thanks. It makes a huge difference in how fast the labor can stack the banks with the lighter weight. Easier on everyone and my wallet too.

I wasn't on site when we had the first delivery of 400 80 lb sacks delivered. We had to move them 1/4 mile. The first pallet was moved with tractor and pallet forks. Bouncy and poor control. The second pallet lifted the tractor up on the front wheels so I abandoned that idea. We loaded 15 bags at a time into the UTV and shuttled them over to the bridge. Then had to move pick them up and move them again. The worst was some of the ones at the bottom. We put used the excavator to swing them out and dump then picked them up and stacked them. Touching each bag 3 times. There were other things like hand tamping the backfill that added to the amount of time that it took to get the original400 in place. But the 112 @ 60lb was delivered right to the site. We had them all stacked in an hour.

 

[jenkinsph]

Yes, placement on delivery is very important and done correctly can save a lot of work.

A plate compactor bought used might be a good addition to your tool arsenal if you have much of this work to do. They play an important roll for flat work such as pavers too.

 

[SunnyNC]

Hello,

Any new pictures of the concrete bag wall? I am planning on doing this and your observations after having this wall for nearly a year now would be helpful. I am concerned about the cracks/concrete not curing as water cannot flow into the lined paper bags and I would appreciate any inputs!

 

[WoodChuckDad]

Hello,

Any new pictures of the concrete bag wall? I am planning on doing this and your observations after having this wall for nearly a year now would be helpful. I am concerned about the cracks/concrete not curing as water cannot flow into the lined paper bags and I would appreciate any inputs!

Took this picture of the oats growing last week.

 

[WoodChuckDad]

Hello,

Any new pictures of the concrete bag wall? I am planning on doing this and your observations after having this wall for nearly a year now would be helpful. I am concerned about the cracks/concrete not curing as water cannot flow into the lined paper bags and I would appreciate any inputs!

There are definitely cracks. Depending on where you plan to use this method, that might be aesthetically unacceptable. For me, it wasn't. I used Quickcrete which does not have a plastic liner to the bag as sakrete does. My biggest challenge was that we had a drought this fall and there was very little rain. I ended pouring buckets of water across the bags from the pond. Not a great solution. I also used a trash pump to pump water onto the the bags. This works very well after the bags have hardened, to quickly remove some of the paper. My biggest concern about cracks is freeze expansion. I will have to wait to see how that plays out. As for stability, the wall is rock solid. The bridge is also absolutely stable. I have driven my excavator and tractor back and forth across it hundreds of times. Pickup truck. Gravel trucks (somewhere around 50,000 lbs loaded). A truck pulling my travel camper. My bridge is solid and in the 1 or 2 significant rain events that we have had, the overflow goes down the culvert and hasn't been higher than 4 inches. Also, I poked larger holes in the bags to allow water to get in, because even a paper bag will shed water once it is saturated. I will use block in other walls I build, because they are near the house....but I wouldn't hesitate to use this material again.
As for lessons learned....have the cement delivered to the job site. Having to move the first batch of 3-400 bags 1/4 mile was just stupid.

 

[WoodChuckDad]

I got to see it perform in a sustained hard rain. Superb performance. Everything was exactly as planned and it handled the water easily.

 

[PILOON]

Hello,

---------------. I am concerned about the cracks/concrete not curing as water cannot flow into the lined paper bags and I would appreciate any inputs!

I'd not worry too much as any left over bags I ever had from a project were hard as a rock by next season (stored over winter in a shed)
Seems water always finds its way into any bag!

 

[Alesandro]

WoodChuckDad;

I admit I did not read all 14 pages worth of posts, but, did you consider using gunnite at all? The spray on cement?

I really enjoyed looking at the progress of your bridge and all the hard work you put in.