Nice Cookies

We live on a hill, and over the years a great portion of dirt has been washed away on the downhill side of our house. We recently had a very large amount of dirt dumped there, and I need to keep it there.

I didn’t plan for this, so I haven’t been saving for this project. I really don’t think I have the money to do something fancy right now, but I figured if I could find something cheap (railroad logs?), I could always add fancy bricks in front of it later.

Any suggestions or tips are welcomed!

reason for the sudden dirt:
In-laws live across the street, they just completed an addition, then decided to extend their driveway and add on a carport. The workers had to "cut out" a section of the yard (also on a hill), and we needed the dirt, so they carted each load across the street and dumped it in our yard.
Did some reading, apparently doing a wall 5′-6′ high is a lot more complicated than one 4′ or lower. I think I’ll divide it into a 2 step terrace sort of thing.

I found cinder blocks on craigslist for .80/each. Also, someone on another forum suggested concrete molds available on e-bay, I could essentially make my own bricks for finished look (I suppose I could color them as well).

Anyone have experience with any of this?
You can probably pick up "recycled" concrete for free. Just stack it. It won’t be the prettiest, but it would probably be the cheapest option until you can afford something more aesthetically pleasing
You can use sandbags. The bags are super cheap and so is sand or if you are extra super cheap and it’s available the supplier of sand may have reject sand which will work just as well but is much cheaper and isn’t the nice pure sand but it doesn’t matter cause you’re gonna be bagging it anyway. Then face and top it with something nicer looking.
After some reading, I think I’m going to go with railroad ties. They’re cost effective, strong, look "good enough", and will hold up for several years (if perhaps it takes that long to get around to adding a face of nice bricks). Plus, for some reason I don’t like the idea of doing anything involving cement or mortar, I’d like to be able to take it down or replace a piece or two if necessary.

How/where are you finding cost effective railroad ties? Im not asking cause I dont think they dont exist, but Ive been trying to figure out where to go for some myself.
I asked folks on a local forum, and got a couple of leads. Someone claims to have purchased some for $8 each.

I haven’t got many prices yet, some of these places are small joints that don’t regularly answer their phone. One place has them for $10.95 each (no idea what kind of store this is, called "cash & carry"), and a big professional garden/landscaping store has them for $16 each. I still need to call a few more places, though.

edit: Another place, local landscaping company, says they have them for $8 or $12, depending on the grade (how worn they are, etc.).
We laid 16 ties down so far, got the first tier and almost all of the second tier done, but not back filled yet. It went better than expected, I didn’t have to change my plans at all, which is unusual. We overlapped at the corners for a stronger hold, and tied the first tier to the second tier as well (rather than just butting up against it) for strength. These things are very much worth the $8/piece that I paid.

None of the things I was worried about posed a problem:
1. chainsaw not cutting through the ties due to creasote- no problem, sliced right through!
2. drill bit (bought a 1/2" auger) wouldn’t drill, were told it would gum up and shred- no problem, drilled right through!
3. measurements/expectations way off- no problem, everything lined up very well!

We didn’t put gravel under the bottom ties, the landscaping guy we bought our stuff from said that it wasn’t necessary if we had a good, hard-packed surface that doesn’t get slushy in rain. We drilled and hammered 18"x1/2" rebar through any ties on the ground, and 12"x1/2" rebar to hold two ties together.

Between 5 of us (including the 2 female spectators/cooks), we went through about 34 beers.

Some crappy cell phone pics:

Looking down hill, the second tier will be getting one more layer or ties

Looking from the bottom, wife and I shoveled all that dirt in there, used an iron rake to distribute/level

Wife’s idea, to move dirt down to the first tier, we built a small dirt ramp for the wheelbarrow. You can also sort of see how the top tie of the first tier is incorporated into the bottom ties of the second tier:

Getting dirt to the lower portion, I used a board as a ramp to get the wheelbarrow high enough to dump. Notice the interlocking corner, and the hole left for the French drain.

Here is my original Google Sketch Up drawing (first time using this program, it’s neat). The lines representing the railroad ties are not the correct size, and the ramp was just a general idea of where I’d like to add the steps, if we go that route. But we stayed pretty darn close to the original measurements, give or take 9" (the width of one tie).

I’m hoping Ida doesn’t wash out a lot of the remaining dirt.
No deadmen or cribbing?

This is how you build a railroad tie wall that will last.

this is the wall before it was backfilled, notice all the tie backs/ tie ins

different wall

I can’t see photobucket at work, but no deadmen (not sure what cribbing is). I’m purposely keeping all walls under 3′, I was told by several people and read many sources that said it wasn’t necessary unless it was over 3′ high.
cribbing ties the deadmen together behind the wall, deadmen without cribbing don’t do very much because only the pressure above them is acting upon them, building the wall like that the dead men will only keep the wall from leaning forward. The cribbing keeps the wall in place.

As for anything under 4′ not needing deadmen, I dont know about that. Anything over 3 ties high (18") we use dead men and crib every other if its not going up that high.

Even though your walls may be only 3′ high each wall is holding up not only the soil behind it but the wall above that one and the soil behind it. I come across it a lot, guys will try and get around having an engineer look over the plan (or most don’t even have a plan for the walls) by building it with two smaller walls with some space in between them. I’m sure your wall will be find but I wanted to contribute to the general knowledge here about this subject.

If I were you since you are to far along to add the proper support I would dig down to your second from the top tie in the corner and toe nail in a tie on a 45? angle across the corner about 2′-3′ from the corner to the center. also in your corners drill some small weep holes in each tie to help out with any pressure from the water behind it.

I’m sure your wall will be find but I wanted to contribute to the general knowledge here about this subject. I see a lot of walls that do not stand the test of time, because of poor design, install and just sometimes using the wrong material.

For example here is a job we did about 5 years ago, we did the two walls that run towards the right of the photo, the other walls that run the other direction (three of them) were built by another company. In the course of 5 years the bottom wall has fallen over twice and has been rebuilt one other time when we pointed out it was going to fall over again. The two walls on top are also probably going to fall over soon. Why? because they thought they could get away with retaining a 15′ elevation change with 3- 5′ walls built out of blocks designed to edge a garden. And the home owners have opted to take the cheapest route each time.

For the drainage, I’m going to go back and dig up 6" of fill behind the wall perpendicular to the house and install a French drain, rather than using weep holes. Or do you think it could use both?

Also, you say that "each wall is holding up not only the soil behind it but the wall above that one and the soil behind it", reference this pic (I don’t think I posted it earlier):

This is how the ground was prior to the project, which continues up the side of the house to the driveway at roughly the same grade. I could build my second tier wall without having the 1st (lower) tier wall there at all, and the height would still the same, which leads me to believe that the 1st tier is not holding up the 2nd tier at all. Is that correct?

(if it isn’t clear, I’m not trying to be argumentative, just trying to get more info)

Could you explain this in more detail? I’m not sure what "toe nail" means here. Are you essentially saying make a triangle to the corner? And what would be the best way to affix it to the ties at that angle?

where is the drain going to drain to? I would run it along the house at the height of the original grade, then run it along that center wall ( the one that runs perpendicular to the house) then right up against the tie on the outside wall and either plunge cut a hole for the pipe to pass through the wall or go under the wall and then run it out away from the wall until it becomes above grade (hard to explain) Use a 4" perforated pipe (the thin white PVC they sell at home depot will work but I would go with SDR 35 green pipe)

Back fill the trench with clean gravel and use landscape fabric between the soil and gravel, come up to 6" below the top of the wall fold the fabric over the gravel and cover with soil.

Do the same on the lower wall, run it against the house then along the bottom wall, end it the same way as the top. It may be over kill but you will never have a water issue in this area.

yes and no, the pressure from the middle wall (the one perpendicular to the house) is transfered to the soil in front of it. yes the wall itself is displacing some of that pressure, however without dead men and cribbing holding the wall back its not as strong as it could be, like I said before your project is so small I’m sure it will be fine.

yes. and on the out side wall nail into the cross piece or get some long screws designed for railroad ties.

How I would run your pipe (of course give it a slight pitch) Red being your walls green being the pipe.

detail of fabric and gravel

how to run the pipe into grade (of course you can run it into the woods so its not in the middle of your lawn.

some actual pics of the drainage behind a wall. These walls were over 8′ high so the drainage field behind them was much wider. you only need 4"-6" wide of gravel.

wow this is beautiful!!!

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