[Everyone] Retaining wall failure

[Sara Crews]

Ron, do you have any idea what a cement retaining wall will cost. It would
be a permanent solution to the problem. I covered the two retaining walls
with the faux stack; Mark and former residents at 410 and 412 did the same
with the walls backing up to their properties.

Just a thought.
Sara
On Sun, Mar 29, 2026 at 7:58 PM Mark Bussey via Everyone <
everyone at chelseaplacedecatur.com> wrote:

> 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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