Hi All, I need to replace the sleepers in a retaining wall, which is about 1.2m in height. Is this a fairly simple, straight forward exercise? Cheers, Robbie
They used steal uprights but timber to retain That's a lot of back-fill to remove to replace them, looks like not enough room to put one in-front of it. Depending on fill, "Possibly" if you moisten the back-fill enough (add wetting agents) it will hold-up while replacing them without collapsing, some fill will collapse though.
Use Exologic hyrbid sleepers from Bunnings. They are awesome !! A plastic and timber composite and dont need painting. Just make sure you do seal and cap ends. On completion you may want to paint match the steel. YouTube video is available on their website. They will fit to the steel supports. You may need to lose some backfill and replace with agg from drainage. If it was done properly first time then agg will likely pour out when you cut the sleepers (chain saw carefully 80% of way through then snap)
Yeah...The steel posts dont add appeal. The protruding ends and heights and mesh. Makes it look like "collapse" is the issue but it seems (over) engineered to hold. Cladding may be a solution to give greater uniformity and also mask the brickwork and timber and steel ? cement sheet cladding - Google Search:
Retaining walls > 1.0m should be designed by an engineer, if it has failed the posts may not have been driven into the ground sufficiently, rusted or timber sleepers rotted out. Ag drains will reduce the pressure behind the wall.
Robbie, if you replace the sleepers and assuming the channels are sound you will need to dig out 500 behind the wall. Sounds like an exercise, the sleepers may be 2.4 which you can get at bunnings or wholesale. I have done around 100 m of retaining walls around my house in the last few months.....been a tiring experience, but great to finally start planting trees! Cheers Ivan