Wood Retaining Walls Can Add Beauty and Splendor – And Also Perform an Important Function
Michalis 'BIG Mike' Kotzakolios


Defined Tag: Wood Retaining Walls.

Wood retaining walls are a unique breed among the rest of the retaining wall classifications. The wood is not as heavy as other building materials like stone, brick or concrete blocks and will therefore always need to be reinforced to hold back certain amounts of soil. Alternatively, since it is reinforced you are able to build wood retaining walls somewhat higher than simple gravity retaining walls built from rocks. As for the wood retaining wall’s comparison to modular walls, you can either make a wood wall with notches for better holding ability or simply lay the pieces of wood one atop the other as you would with other earthen building materials.

You should begin constructing any wood retaining walls like you would any other wall. Simply mark off where you want your wall to go with stakes and twine and then dig a few inches down in the area where you have marked off. The steps change at this point, however, as you will now need to know how tall you want your wall to be. Once you have decided your wood retaining wall’s height you should cut some four by four pieces of wood to that length (plus extra depending on how deep you want your support pieces to go). Next you will want to dig holes for your support beams every four feet or so to make sure you have ample support. Follow up by lowering the beams into each of the holes and then add concrete to the holes up to the ground level to make sure you have the ultimate amount of stability possible.

When a week or so has passed and you are completely sure that the concrete has cured, you can resume building your wood retaining walls. You will need to cut your boards to the proper size for your wall, or you can buy precut boards depending on what types of tools you keep in your garage or work shed. Place your cut wood against the supports and make sure one board reaches at least two or three of the support beams, and then bolt the boards to the supports. After each row has been bolted on you will need to backfill with soil to make sure everything is strong. Also, with wood retaining walls you will want to add at least six inches of gravel in the backfill for drainage purposes.

BIG Mike is a well known author, developer and Adsense expert as well as the owner of Niche Maniacs - a unique Adsense Marketing System designed to build long-term passive income streams from Adsense, Amazon, YPN, Chitika and other PPC services.