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Charles,
When retaining anything substantial, I use old scaffold tubes secured behind the sleeper wall with steel strapping.
I try and hide support posts whenever possible.
Thanks for your response Ian.
I presume you concrete them in?
By steel strapping do you mean something like builder's band?
depending on how high the retaining wall is, I have use sleepers, upto 12ft high but leaned them slightly back, to they sit in the bank then left spaces at regular intervals to allow the water to escape through it reducing any pressure build up on the sleepers. They use the same technique with concrete blocks specificly designed for retaining walls that lean back and you can always plant up areas if you leave more spaces.
Charles Langford said:
No, sledge hammering the tubes to a good depth, in addition to being securely attached to the oak sleepers, makes for solid anchoring.
Duh! Of course, 'builder's band' is the correct term, one that escaped me at the time of writing!
You could also use vertical oak sleepers concreted 2-3ft into the ground as posts, usually every 1.2m, and then attached the facing horizontal sleepers with large timber-lock screws. The softwoods ones don’t last long so I’d always try to use the oak ones.
I use off-cuts of sleeper concreted in as posts behind and timberlok through into them. I would see the maximum height of a wall like this as 900mm and advise people to expect a life of 10-15 years max.
I always backfill with clean stone and try to have the posts well haunched to encourage water away from the base of posts into the stone.
I contemplated trying to use concrete posts but the extra labour add up significantly and you get closer and closer to the price of a proper wall.
Benjamin, I think simply adding a batter to a wall of sleepers is nowhere near enough. The concrete blocks you speak of have retaining nibs to lock in place and have a much higher mass.
we normally run a line of sleepers set as posts in concrete on a string line. Its then a simple job to build teh wall along the face of it, eithger timberlooking in from teh front or behind. I think steel looks horrible and is too expensive anyway. i have seen some people use concrete posts, but they look ugly as well.
I have just taken on a garden maintenance for a client who has this exact problem a sloping garden with part leveled with a three sleepers high supported wall by a line (every 1.5m) of soft wood half round posts I dont want to be there when they have rotted through!!! and already i can see slight sign of movement outwards. I have mentioned this to the client but they do not seem to be interested to do anything at the moment. I think the option my be a few 100mm posts concreted in to about a meter deep and bolted to the existing sleepers
A metre deep? good luck with that.
only reason I mentioned approx one meter is that the first 400mm/500mm is very soft sandy soil. properly what the sleepers have been sat on