Had a retaining wall fail on a job in Bellingham yesterday

The base gravel wasn't compacted enough, I guess, and a whole section just slumped over after the rain. I'm looking at two days to tear it out and start over. Anyone have a go-to method for checking compaction before you start laying block?

3 comments

3 Comments

julia_patel1mo ago

Check the soil with a proctor test before you even order gravel. What was the soil like under the base? Sometimes you get a clay layer that holds water and turns to soup, no matter how well you compact the gravel on top. Did you dig down to stable subsoil or just build on the existing ground?

reesemiller1mo ago

That's a rough one, man. Julia's point about the clay layer is huge. Did you actually hit solid ground with your shovel before you started, or was the soil already wet and soft when you dug the trench? I've seen guys just scrape off the grass and call it good, and that's a recipe for exactly what you described.

felix_henderson541mo ago

Yeah @reesemiller, that's the whole job right there. If you don't dig down to something solid first, you're just building a house on a bowl of soup. All that gravel and work just sinks. Seen it a dozen times. People skip the hard part and then wonder why it fails.