[Everyone] Retaining wall failure

[Mark Bussey]

 Hi Ron,    Are you talking about needing to shore up/replace the entire retaining wall all the way down to my place, or just your section of it?
Mark

    On Sunday, March 29, 2026 at 03:44:55 PM EDT, Ronald Baggett via Everyone <everyone at chelseaplacedecatur.com> wrote:   

 Hi Everyone,
As we discussed previously at the HOA meeting the wood timber retaining wall at the street facing corner of our building had started to fail.  After the last heavy rains the top of the wall had shifted about 3 inches forward.  
As our HVAC unit was in the path of the wall should it fall forward, I dug out behind the wall to see if it could be positioned back in place and reinforced.  What I found was the wall had no drainage system as it should have had to prevent water damage to the timbers.  There was also only one token dead head support instead of the 3 or 4 a wall that size should have.  The bottom two layers of the wall were water logged, rotted and not usable.  
I have built many retaining walls and  expect it would take me 2-3 weeks to complete. Half of that time would be preparing the area and half building the wall.  
A thin dry stack stone wall like Sara has beside her home would make the most sense.  The cost is similar to the treated timbers or tacky cement blocks the big box stores carry ( around $200 more). The big difference is the dry stack wall is much more labor intensive.  With a proper drainage and water mitigation system a dry stack wall will last indefinitely.  
 I think a more important issue is if the other timber retaining walls were installed the same way we can expect them to fail sooner than later.  With a proper drainage system you can get 50 or more years out of treated timber retaining walls.  Without a drainage system you can see failure as soon as 5 years.  After taking a closer look at the other retaining  walls you can already see several areas where the walls have already failed and are getting shoved out of position.  I know there are companies that repair and restore timber retaining walls. I don’t know how the cost compares to replacement or if these retaining walls can be saved with the way they were originally installed. 
One step we can take to relieve pressure on the walls is run drainage pipes from our downspouts over the top of the walls so that water has somewhere to go other than behind the walls. 
Ron


Sent from my iPhone

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