# Pour concrete retaining wall...



## ruskent (Jun 20, 2005)

Normally i just build srws and stick to small masonry structures. This job has come my waywhere the is a walkout basement. Customer wants a patio. This means we need to build a 1200 face foot retaining wall with heights up to 8 feet and bring in around 800 yards of fill.

Personally, i'd like to do poured concrete walls and cultured stone them. I think it would match the house much better. For some reason i seem to think it will end up costing less then SRW since backfilling will go much faster not having to worry about geo grid. 

So if we do poured walls, ow would the walls be engineered? What type of footing? How thick the walls? I had engineering done for a 3 ft masonry wall. Engineer wanting the T footing, then 2 feet of CMU block underground. When it was all said and done, for a 3 ft wall i had 6 feet of wall/footing underground.

Basically, i want to see if i can even meet the constraints of the budget building it this way. I know i will need a engineer. I just want to see if anyone could give me a ballbark per a sq ft # just for the poured walls so i can see if it makes some sort of sense to build the patio this way. Also i need to give somee kind of ballpark $ on the retainer agreement so i can start the design process.


Thanks Matt


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## ruskent (Jun 20, 2005)

One more pic. And oh yea. I know all that dirt the excavator put against the foundation has to be reexcavating for compactable fill.


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## concretemasonry (Dec 1, 2006)

For an 8' height, I imagine a poured wall will be much more expensive. As you know it is very costlt to build a good retaining wall in a cold climate.

Somewhere down the line, someone will have to come up with the detail design required for a poured wall that will show the real cost. For any rigid wall, you will have at least 3' below grade in your area and then face building and compacting during the wet spring weather.

Prepare to look at a SRW wall when they see the cost comparison.


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## ruskent (Jun 20, 2005)

concretemasonry said:


> For an 8' height, I imagine a poured wall will be much more expensive. As you know it is very costlt to build a good retaining wall in a cold climate.
> 
> Somewhere down the line, someone will have to come up with the detail design required for a poured wall that will show the real cost. For any rigid wall, you will have at least 3' below grade in your area and then face building and compacting during the wet spring weather.
> 
> Prepare to look at a SRW wall when they see the cost comparison.




If we go SRW we will use Techo Bloc quarry stone 4 and 8inch combo. On similar jobs we end up being in the $70 range atleast per a face foot. This is if we are doing 4-5 ft pulls of grid with imported fill.



The main reason i want to go concrete has to due with the way i want to intergrated the outdoor kitchen, ralings, etc with the walls.


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## lukachuki (Feb 11, 2005)

Matt you get all the good jobs. :thumbup:

Actually I'm getting ready to do a similar wall on a smaller scale here in a month or 2. I'm sure we will learn lots. In our case we don't have a choice as it is what the customer wants. A faux FL Wright house which has been fun.

Good luck in figuring this and let us know which way you go.


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## ruskent (Jun 20, 2005)

lukachuki said:


> Matt you get all the good jobs. :thumbup:
> 
> Actually I'm getting ready to do a similar wall on a smaller scale here in a month or 2. I'm sure we will learn lots. In our case we don't have a choice as it is what the customer wants. A faux FL Wright house which has been fun.
> 
> Good luck in figuring this and let us know which way you go.




How are you constructing the wall?

On any project, labor seems to be the largest expense. Yes concrete and rebar is very expensive, i just think by pouring the wall will save alot of labor.


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## neolitic (Apr 20, 2006)

And the most expensive "labor"
will be when the engineer
smacks that stamp on the plan!:laughing:


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## Chris Johnson (Apr 19, 2007)

Call the guy that did the original basement for a number, with that white stuff on the ground there I would bet he's not over booked right now. Not saying that's going to help with the price, but even though it's a small job he may jump at it.

Do you not use geo grid there for poured walls? It's designed in my area anything over a certain height and we need to put it in, sometimes placed at various heights i.e. 8' wall, geo grid @ 3' and 6'


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## Tscarborough (Feb 25, 2006)

70 bucks for SRW is good money, but assuming everything else is equal, I do not think you will be able to pour a concrete wall for less than an SRW.


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## Driftwood (Feb 15, 2004)

RUSK , I would go with a 10" thick wall w/re-bar 8' tall . $235.00 lineal foot

Guessing footing! 12"x36" w/re-bar $73.00 lineal foot, dug by hand

Price includes pump. good luck, lets help one another!,pass it on

Price from Home Tech Cost estimator 2007 cost area Ca.11 [No. Ca.]

Good luck ,Driftwood


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## ruskent (Jun 20, 2005)

Driftwood, those prices do not seem bad at all.

Now another option could be to build concrete peirs, run steel beams and decking and pour a 4 inch concrete slab. I know this is another pricey option, but would eliminate ALOT OF wall and fill.


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## tgeb (Feb 9, 2006)

We did a poured concrete retaining wall last winter/spring but priced it in Sept 06.

Our wall was a total of 39' long and footing was 5'2" wide 1' thick w/lots of steel.

Some of the wall was 8' high and some was 6' high, 12' thick w/lots of steel. I divided it all out and it came to about $44/face foot.

But we also waterproofed it and put drain tile behind it and backfilled it most all the way with stone.

The price would be more today.

One thing to watch for when doing this sort of thing is to make sure that when you do these retaining walls you are not exposing footing to the elements that is not "frost footing". 
I have seen work done where the HO wants a nice flat area next to the walkout doors, and digs the slope away. Well usually the builder only puts in the minimal amount of frost footing and the rest is protected by the soil slope. Take away the slope...footing heaves!


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## Driftwood (Feb 15, 2004)

Rusk, I'll give You My 07 Est book when My 08 gets here. e mail Me


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## ruskent (Jun 20, 2005)

We are still going back to forth on this project. Client felt my srw price was to high. He had the company who poured the basement walls work up a price for just the walls. THe guy said he could do the walls for around 30k. He just guesstimated the correct way to build the walls??? I told the homeowner the # is useless unless it is from a stamped plan.


Some people just do not understand that a retaining wall is alot different then a basement wall. The guy was also going to tie the wall in to the basement wall with rebar? Is that a good idea?


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## Tscarborough (Feb 25, 2006)

Exactly the right tack. Compare your SRW engineered wall to his engineered PIP or CMU wall, and you win, every time.


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## Snow Man (Aug 18, 2008)

Tscarborough said:


> Exactly the right tack. Compare your SRW engineered wall to his engineered PIP or CMU wall, and you win, every time.


It is a normal part of the process. His only mistake was not doing it as soon as he wrecked the forms.
__________________8 BEER LIMIT.


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## Hoven (Aug 13, 2008)

Call the foudation contractor back again. Pour this wall with a footing and key way. I would also tie a steel rebar mat for the wall interior. Your also gonna want deadmen poured back into the hill to strengthen. 800 yards is alot of new material to keep back. I tend beef these up. There's always time to do it right the second time.


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## concretemasonry (Dec 1, 2006)

Hoven -

How many foundation contractors can provide a complete, signed design that is accepted by code people? there is a big differebce between a free-stabding retaining wall and a basement that has a fllor to resist the top from moving in. - The client is just trying a crude approach to get the price down without knowing a thing.

The amount of material (yards) behind the walll is not as important as the height of the wall, the type of soil and the specs for the backfill.

If you just use dirt for backfill, it probably would fall on deaf ears, which is common to people with nothing between the ears.


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## Driftwood (Feb 15, 2004)

*7 months later??? Why bother with this?????*

You have more patience than Me !!!


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## ruskent (Jun 20, 2005)

Driftwood said:


> You have more patience than Me !!!


It takes this long to close these deals now. House is not done yet. It has the base coat for stucco on now. But it is not dry walled yet. The electrian has been holding them up.



I get these jobs because I stay on the client. It takes people along time to make choices. It is taking a year now to close alot of deals.


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## ruskent (Jun 20, 2005)

Well it looks like we are going with a concrete wall. Customer wants stone to match house. I will met with my engineer this week to get a accurate drawing for the wall done. 

Basically I loose the wall portion of the job. BUT it seems that I will do the excavation and lay out. The concrete guy will come in and pour the walls. I will then do all cmu work for steps (and there are alot), bbq, pillars, seat walls etc. I will handle all backfilling. The company doing the stone and stucco on the house will do the cultured stone on the walls and pillars.

Overall I am happy. The finsh product will look much more high end. In the end its still my design, and my name on the finshed product.

I think I might have 10 days worth of labor less on this project now. So I am not loosing all that much money.


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## ruskent (Jun 20, 2005)

I picked up the stamped plans today. Engineer speced a 10" thick wall. Footing size range from 3' 6" wide to 8' 6" wide.

I am curious to see what the poured wall guy comes in at for a price.


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## Tscarborough (Feb 25, 2006)

The problem with a poured wall is that if there is a problem, no matter how small it is, the wall is toast eventually.


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## ruskent (Jun 20, 2005)

Things are not much better with a SRW if there is a failure.

The walls might come in way over budget now, who knows.


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## Tscarborough (Feb 25, 2006)

It only costs labor to repair an SRW wall.


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## ruskent (Jun 20, 2005)

Now we have another twist. The basement contractor does not have forms to do curves. How rare is it to find a guy with curved forms? Or is the only way to do this framing your own forms?


Is using cmu block a worth wild thing to look into if the customer has to have masonary walls?


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## Tscarborough (Feb 25, 2006)

What forming system is he using? Pretty much all of the modular forming systems I know of work just fine on curved walls on anything over about a 4' radius.


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## Joe71 (Oct 31, 2009)

I have a related question. I have a retaining wall to build alongside an existing garage. The new wall will be 4ft from the existing foundation wall and is to be attached to it. The ground slopes down at about 30 degrees. This makes the new wall about 10ft high at the low end and 2ft high at the higher elevation end.

On the 10ft end, the wall runs into and connects into an existing vertical concrete wall (using wedge anchors every foot with attached rebar). On top of this new retaining wall, we will pour a 4ft wide sidewalk the 30ft along the top of the wall and alongside the old garage. The sidewalk is to be attached (again using wedge anchors) into the existing foundation wall. So.. What I will end up with is a concrete BOX, closed on all sides including the top.

The engineer has presented me with a plan for the wall which includes a 10" thick wall with TWO layers of rebar (cage) for ALL the footings plus, all the wall higher than 7ft is shown with the same TWO layers of #4 rebar. The footings for the 7, 8, 9 and 10ft sections are shown as 7.5ft wide with the double rebar cage.

I am thinking that my wall is "restrained" on all sides as opposed to freestanding and needs no such reinforcement in either the footings or the wall itself. In the past, I have built such restrained walls with a single layer of #4 rebar in 3ft wide x 1ft thick footings and a single layer of 18" OC rebar in 8" thick walls. 

Is this engineer just "over designing" or is there some new code that requires all this extra steel?

Thanks.


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## 4th generation (Mar 28, 2008)

So based upon a few lines that you wrote, we are supposed to second guess your engineer who has all the details and information and has probably visited the site? If you dont like his design then hire another engineer to have a go at it.


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## Joe71 (Oct 31, 2009)

Well.. I think you are right about getting another engineer. The lady never visited the site, just took the phone explanation from my wall guy and sent over a plan. I think she sent me a "cover your ass, fail safe" wall design which took into account none of the actual site conditions.

But.. Before I hired another engineer, I was hoping some KNOWLEDGABLE person would give me an opinion (as opposed to a smarty answer). But perhaps I am in the wrong forum.


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## jgray152 (Oct 4, 2009)

You pay for me and my crews flight, room and time and I will help teach you our technique by pouring a concrete retainer wall carved and colored into stone.  A lot more durable than cultured stone pasted onto a concrete wall as the faux rock is the concrete wall.

I wish I could find the 6' high wall we did. I'll find images


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