Piles

[Arcane]

I work a lot with piles of stuff like woodchip mulch, crushed rock, compost, etc., and I'm building a retaining wall as a backstop against which I can have 6 yards of these materials dumped at a time. I was going to use the 2'x2'x6' precast blocks, which are pretty cheap at the concrete plant but heavy and expensive to get here, so I'm pouring a concrete wall. I'll build cinder block walls to separate the bays when I figure out the optimum bay size. The photo is of one section of the retaining wall footing.

What should I put on the ground? I don't really want concrete, because some drainange would be desirable. But then I want to be able to scrape and push the piles around without digging up the ground and adding that to the piles. I was thinking of 6" packed crushed stone, under 4" of packed gravel. I've seen a gravel that really packs hard, but don't know what its called. And under the compost pile I'll probably just leave dirt, to make it easy for the worms.

 

[Egon]

Put down a concrete floor on a slope so water will drain out.

 

[IslandTractor]

How about a concrete floor which slopes away from the wall just enough for efficient rain water run off and drainage? That way you wouldn't have to worry about digging up gravel and getting it mixed in with your materials.

 

[AlanB]

We have mulch piles that we use, red, brown and black we also keep woodchips and topsoil.

I am using logs to build my bunker sides (they are free) we have always just had loose piles in the past, I am currently attempting to "neaten up" the storage yard.

I would strongly suggest against using cinder block for walls, over a period of time, the bumps and hits that come with that type of use will wipe them out. We have experienced that problem here at my day job.

If I was willing to spend the money to do the concrete, I would definetely do it with the precast ones, even if it involved renting equipment, I believe you would still be far cheaper then poured in place and any future changes would be much easier.

What we do is just leave a base of the piled material that we do not dig into. That works for us but we are constantly adding and removing from our piles.

At work, with our contaminated soil building, we sloped the concrete floor actually back towards the wall to retain any moisture / liquids / rainwater so that we do not have unwanted ground contamination. Sometimes it pools, but as a general statement it cycles dry.

If you were to slope the concrete away from the walls, and out the front, as the rain water etc washed off, so would your lighter products such as mulch and woodchips. Depending on the rain etc. it could be inconvienient.

 

[IslandTractor]

, we sloped the concrete floor actually back towards the wall to retain any moisture / liquids / rainwater so that we do not have unwanted ground contamination. Sometimes it pools, but as a general statement it cycles dry.

If you were to slope the concrete away from the walls, and out the front, as the rain water etc washed off, so would your lighter products such as mulch and woodchips. Depending on the rain etc. it could be inconvienient.

Interesting point. What about putting some simple drainage system in at the base of the wall and then slope a concrete floor towards the wall.