It looked like it was just fibers laid every which way, and not a heavy woven fabric like they use on the interstates. It is fairly tough stuff, but you can knock holes in it positioning the boulders.
Right ....yeah, sounds exactly like the non-woven stuff I have .... I've torn up plenty of it
I 'chinked' the voids between the rocks with smaller rocks and then filled what was left with red mulch. I am in the process [ probably last years ] of replacing the red mulch with granite chips.
I've gone thru and mostly graded and sorted the rocks I have into various sizes .... even with pulling out smaller, rounded rocks for a couple of dry creek beds I'm doing I still have plenty of small stuff (fist to softball sized) to chink with ....
I think I have enough rock right now to do the entire wall, which is probably 70 or 80' in length.
I had a big chipmunk poking his head out at me and giving me a hard time as I drove by in my truck.
LOL ....
So, I am going to 'try' to evict him before he tunnels and tears up all my fabric.... He is gone now, was just passing thru... but once they figure they have a home, they are hard to get rid of ...
I hear ya .... we've got them and all sorts of other critters that like diggin' around here .... as all the holes dug in my screened topsoil pile shows ....
The terrain I'm working with is a bit different than yours, which appears to have been largely above grade initially. I'm cut into a bank at a total depth of 5' to 7' and I'm down past the 1' topsoil layer and the 2' sandy loam layer into hard, undisturbed clay/shale .... it's almost like concrete. Bucket on the loader pretty much won't touch it with having the toothbar on.
I've cut into the bank and have a drop off that ranges from 1' to about 3' or 4' .... I've tapered the cut back into the hillside a bit so the wall, when built, will lean into the hillside. All the topsoil has been removed from the slope and will added back in once I get the wall up high enough .... so figure another 1' or so of height, making the tallest point probably 5' ....
You can see the area I'm working with here:
Retaining Wall
I'm planning on using my loader to move, stack, and place the larger boulders and rocks - the largest of which are probably 30" or so in diameter. Wish I had a mini-ex (with a thumb) here to aid in placing the rocks, but that likely ain't going to happen. I'll probably throw the backhoe on and use it to shove stuff around and help with the positioning.
Had figured to use fabric just to avoid any soil leaking thru at some future point, although there won't really be any loose, undisturbed soil behind the wall - except at the top, when I add the topsoil back in ....
I'm also planning to make the wall high enough so that there is a bit of a swale on the top side, so that no surface runoff ever actually reaches the top side of the wall .... it will be channeled away from it before it ever gets there.
I've thought about leaving enough room behind the base layer of rocks on the bottom to throw in some gravel and 4" perforated flex pipe with a soil sock to drain any water that might wind up there .... but still haven't decided if I really need to do that.
One thing I do know - just after chucking around the smaller rocks for the dry creek beds - is that I do not want to have rebuild this wall at some later point due to poor design.
Just out of curiosity - how long did it take you to build your wall ?
I was hoping that I could get ours done in a couple of days - which is probably over-optimistic by 100% or more .... :laughing:
