elinwood
Structural
- Apr 2, 2012
- 34
I have a project "retrofitting" a "retaining wall" and I'm having trouble selecting the type of retaining wall. You'll see why I put those two words in quotation marks below:
A brick wall was erected between our property and the neighbor's property. There's initially no need of a "retaining wall" because originally, the ground level between our property and the neighbor's property was relatively level. On our side of the brick wall, there's a concrete gutter 80 cm wide and 80 cm deep. Further into the property is a 12 meter wide road designated for very heavy loads (the property is a warehouse) The neighbor decided to excavate their property resulting in a 2 to 7 meters of elevation difference.
Due to the difference of elevation, the earth (w/ the brick wall and the foundation) has now collapsed. I'm in a country where lawsuits aren't exactly useful so there's no use in finding out whose fault it is. Since the road is already built - and is not damaged, is there any hope of salvaging the road ? The owner is pretty insistent on salvaging the road. I've thought about using MSE walls and RCC Walls with counterforts but all these methods involve demolishing at least 3 meters of the 12 meter wide road for construction of the retaining wall.
The other issue is, if we did end up salvaging the road, the contractor evidently didn't do a very good job on it. The road was only 13 cm thick and there was no subbase whatsoever - which probably contributed to the wall collapsing. I'm concerned that if the old road was re-used, there will be major settlement issues (the current "sub-base" is clay).
A brick wall was erected between our property and the neighbor's property. There's initially no need of a "retaining wall" because originally, the ground level between our property and the neighbor's property was relatively level. On our side of the brick wall, there's a concrete gutter 80 cm wide and 80 cm deep. Further into the property is a 12 meter wide road designated for very heavy loads (the property is a warehouse) The neighbor decided to excavate their property resulting in a 2 to 7 meters of elevation difference.
Due to the difference of elevation, the earth (w/ the brick wall and the foundation) has now collapsed. I'm in a country where lawsuits aren't exactly useful so there's no use in finding out whose fault it is. Since the road is already built - and is not damaged, is there any hope of salvaging the road ? The owner is pretty insistent on salvaging the road. I've thought about using MSE walls and RCC Walls with counterforts but all these methods involve demolishing at least 3 meters of the 12 meter wide road for construction of the retaining wall.
The other issue is, if we did end up salvaging the road, the contractor evidently didn't do a very good job on it. The road was only 13 cm thick and there was no subbase whatsoever - which probably contributed to the wall collapsing. I'm concerned that if the old road was re-used, there will be major settlement issues (the current "sub-base" is clay).
