Hillside Retaining Wall

[trlong]

Eddie,

Thanks. When it's finished, if it looks half as good as any or your projects I'll be ecstatic. BTW, if you need any fieldstone, come on up. Might be a bit expensive, per pound, to get it all the way home though!

I'm trying to estimate what it would have cost me to have this much stone brought in. They are selling local fieldstone, up here, for about $600/pallet, plus delievery and when it is dropped off you better have a way to move it to your worksite. Pallets carry about 3'x4' x about 3' high (approx. 1500 lb/pallet). Folks with old stone walls are selling them off to those with the equipment to move and sell them. I keep thinking "mini-excavator" and $'s. Wonder if my neighbor would miss our shared stone wall? /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Tom

 

[v8dave]

Great looking job. These types of projects truly need a tractor. I also used a 6' or 7' steel pinch/pry bar to move rocks a few inches to their final resting spots. If you don't have one it'll help a lot.

Any project is an excuse for another tool. It looks to me like you're a man looking for a back hoe. Make sure you find a rock in the wrong place you can't dig out with the front loader. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif

 

[trlong]

Dave,

Absolutely, the 6' iron bar is indispensible, it is there, but not obvious, in several of the pic.'s. Even the 18" pry bar comes in handy. The older I get, the more I like the concept of levers (and wheels) and now am enamoured with hydraulics. I have a "46" BH on the CUT. I'm trying to find the $'s for a local shop to manufacture a "Thumb" for it, as it would be really handy as the wall gets higher. MC Faulkner, in Maine, wants $800 + shipping for the only stock thumb I've found that will fit. /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif

Tom

 

[v8dave]

Oops, I just went back through the pictures and sure enough there is one picture that shows the backhoe on the tractor. I missed that one on the first pass through. There's also a 2nd pix that partially shows the BH that I'm sure I did see, but I didn't notice the back end controls.

I backfilled my rock retaining wall with gravel to provide a firm backing that wouldn't wash out. Don't know why I was so concerned about wash out though, the hill side it "holds up" is so called partially decomposed granite. So called, because it isn't quite decomposed. You can go up there and pick axe a hole in it but can't dig out with a shovel. Amazing thing is the amount of rain fall we can have and still not have any water flow off the surface. It drains a lot of water really fast.

Attached pix is the wall I laid in. Not the nice flat stuff you've got though. But it's what's available in California. Holding a 2:1 slope, with 2' wide wall, gives me 4' more driveway width. As you can see I need it.

 

[v8dave]

I cheated though on laying the wall. I didn't use my Kubota tractor/back hoe. I rented an excavator with a thumb. I actually had to take out an existing wall first, re-cut the slope to widen the drive way, dig a footing and then re-set the wall. It took twice as many rocks to reset the wall. Here is a pix of me on the rental picking up a rock from the original wall. Nice thing about the excavator is the stability. I could carry those rocks about 100' to my storage pile in the 'hoe bucket.

 

[trlong]

Nice job Dave! I don't think the excavator was "cheating", it's the right tool for the job. I have come very close to renting one for all the same reasons, especially to have a thumb which would make moving and placing stones so much easier. I also wanted to back the wall with 3/4" stone but had to settle for using all the small ones I could gather here, due to available $'s.

Nice job on the drive, too, and I really like the looks of that "tractor shed" you're building. /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

 

[JimMorrissey]

Nice work Dave.

 

[v8dave]

Thanks you guys. I'll post a thread on the whole project some time. Too many pix to sort. The project was actually finished last December--at about 2x what I planned to spend.

 

[trlong]

Slow progress. One pic for update. Almost up to needed level. Still some of those top stones are being stored there and have to be set or a better place found for them.

I've been "mining" more rock (removing old stumps and cutting in another "wood road"). The wall is coming slow as it takes more time to get the stones than to back fill the wall or set a few more stones.

As "catvet" says in "Woodland Road", too much to do before the snow flies....

Tom

P.S. (Grass is finally really coming in on that slope from "Seeding a Steep Slope" /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif)

 

[Arcane]

Tom:

Nice retaining wall on a tough slope. I'm rebuilding a 3-4' retaining wall, and we're thinking about putting in a walled flower garden just below it, so that from above we'll see the tops of the flowers, like a floor mosaic.

Speaking of excavators, I had to hire a contractor for this rock that was in the wrong place. This guy is good. Although he has a thumb on the bucket, he tries not to lift rocks to avoid the inevitable scarring. He tries first to push rocks from behind a cushion of dirt (like hitting a golf ball out of a sand trap), so he moves the machine around a lot. If that doesn't work, he flips the rock over to grab it from the bottom, where the scars won't show.

The thumb would be such a useful tool and pay for itself quickly on all but rocks of this size. Did the installation seem complicated? Probably voids the JD warranty.

BTW, this is the rock I'm giving my spouse and best friend for our 25th. Some women expect big rocks for their 25th. She's unique.