My first post here and hoping I've scanned enough of the intro stuff to not make any mistakes here - if not, my apologies, I tried!
So while working in a family friend's garden at their new home (a small extra patio down in a secret corner of the garden - I do groundworks and related small in-garden builds) I noticed what looked like a potential problem that's outside my scope of experience or knowledge. Google seemed to think diynot would be a place to ask, so here I am.
Here's the current site, excuse the half-arsed diagram:
So my little job involved walking past this dozens of times, but every time I did I noticed more and more, through the shrubs, plants and weeds, that the 9" with brick-and-half pillars wall up above was sat on an exposed and pretty rough footing that varied in depth between a foot and over 2 feet, but then beneath that was just as much or more bare earth (the typical clay soil found around here). There's also 3 large cracks in the full height of the footing in various places. The wall is just shy of 10m long.
It looks like the pond area was likely excavated some time after the wall was built with no regard made for potential undermining of the whole wall and,tbh, feels really dodgy like it has the potential to go and go quickly/catastrophically!
Upon mentioning this to my mate, he asked what I'd do if it were mine. I said probably build a 9" block wall up to past the first few courses of bricks and backfill with concrete, either that or something with gabion cages:
Afterwards though, thinking about it more, I'm not all that convinced it'd be good enough and somewhat botchy. I'm no surveyor and my brickwork training only extends to 3 years of night school to get the basics, lol, so very little real-world experience. So stuff like this isn't something I'm really all that confident about giving out advice on when the consequences could be pretty severe.
My current thinking is to tell him to ignore what I said previously and, despite the costs involved, get in a surveyor to assess the situation properly and I'm hoping anyone knowledgeable here might give the nod to that so I can feel confident it's the right move.
EDIT: Also, around half way along the way, there's a kink in the wall, outwards (towards the pond) and 2 pillars built side-by-side and gobbed up with mortar that's all cracked/fallen away, so it's effectively 2 walls, neither of which have a return or anything at least anchoring them a little. I reckon if I pushed on the smaller section I could send about 2 ton of stuff for a swim...
So while working in a family friend's garden at their new home (a small extra patio down in a secret corner of the garden - I do groundworks and related small in-garden builds) I noticed what looked like a potential problem that's outside my scope of experience or knowledge. Google seemed to think diynot would be a place to ask, so here I am.
Here's the current site, excuse the half-arsed diagram:
So my little job involved walking past this dozens of times, but every time I did I noticed more and more, through the shrubs, plants and weeds, that the 9" with brick-and-half pillars wall up above was sat on an exposed and pretty rough footing that varied in depth between a foot and over 2 feet, but then beneath that was just as much or more bare earth (the typical clay soil found around here). There's also 3 large cracks in the full height of the footing in various places. The wall is just shy of 10m long.
It looks like the pond area was likely excavated some time after the wall was built with no regard made for potential undermining of the whole wall and,tbh, feels really dodgy like it has the potential to go and go quickly/catastrophically!
Upon mentioning this to my mate, he asked what I'd do if it were mine. I said probably build a 9" block wall up to past the first few courses of bricks and backfill with concrete, either that or something with gabion cages:
Afterwards though, thinking about it more, I'm not all that convinced it'd be good enough and somewhat botchy. I'm no surveyor and my brickwork training only extends to 3 years of night school to get the basics, lol, so very little real-world experience. So stuff like this isn't something I'm really all that confident about giving out advice on when the consequences could be pretty severe.
My current thinking is to tell him to ignore what I said previously and, despite the costs involved, get in a surveyor to assess the situation properly and I'm hoping anyone knowledgeable here might give the nod to that so I can feel confident it's the right move.
EDIT: Also, around half way along the way, there's a kink in the wall, outwards (towards the pond) and 2 pillars built side-by-side and gobbed up with mortar that's all cracked/fallen away, so it's effectively 2 walls, neither of which have a return or anything at least anchoring them a little. I reckon if I pushed on the smaller section I could send about 2 ton of stuff for a swim...
Last edited:
You can see how the soil has naturally started to fall away beneath the footing on this one.