Building a Dry Rubble Retaining wall.

[cuttertree]

Ok, I have a section of my land (the corner of the plot) which slopes down very sharply. It's pretty much useless, it can't be made into a rockery as the slope faces away from the land & house. So my thoughts were to build a dry stone retaining wall up (approx 6') and then backfill so that i can make the land level right up to the corner.
Materials. I have just dug up one of the driveways and have a mass of broken up concrete with loads of large lumps (the driveway has about 9-10" of concrete laid) and i would like to get rid of this somehow.

The plan is for the corner to be flat, ideally a wooden deck.

Any ideas? I'm wanting it to be strong enough to support quite a bit of soil. I did think to put some sort of post and scaffolding board wall up to act as an initail retainer and then lump the rubble in mixing with cement as i go to make a solid mass, so when the timber eventaully rots it will be free standing. The timber for posts i have would be 4" 3m lengths of untreated american pine of which i have masses of.

[Green Aura]

We had our garden landscaped with two semicircular retaining walls separating the top and bottom bits of the garden. The landscaper who did this built the proper retaining wall with blocks, and put drainage into them before building the drystone wall in front.

I don't know for certain but I fairly certain he muttered something about having to do that to meet building regulations - I guess that's only a problem if you planned to sell the house.

However you build it though, the drainage bit is a good idea.

[jenko]

Ok, I have a section of my land (the corner of the plot) which slopes down very sharply. It's pretty much useless, it can't be made into a rockery as the slope faces away from the land & house. So my thoughts were to build a dry stone retaining wall up (approx 6') and then backfill so that i can make the land level right up to the corner.
Materials. I have just dug up one of the driveways and have a mass of broken up concrete with loads of large lumps (the driveway has about 9-10" of concrete laid) and i would like to get rid of this somehow.

The plan is for the corner to be flat, ideally a wooden deck.

Any ideas? I'm wanting it to be strong enough to support quite a bit of soil. I did think to put some sort of post and scaffolding board wall up to act as an initail retainer and then lump the rubble in mixing with cement as i go to make a solid mass, so when the timber eventaully rots it will be free standing. The timber for posts i have would be 4" 3m lengths of untreated american pine of which i have masses of.

having been in the same situation as you, on a job that i worked on, i would just build it around a foot and a half wide, and out of stone and bits of large concrete etc, its just like a normal dry stone wall just wider.

jenko