Retaining wall help

[eddyf]

We have a retaining wall that is retaining the higher land on the neighbours side. It was a breeze block wall that had a very bad lean on it towards our side. The breeze block wall was around 3 foot high with coping on the top. Part of the breeze block wall was beginning to collapse so I took it upon myself to remove the whole wall safely before it fell on either me, my toddler or my dogs.

Behind the breeze block wall is a brick wall that is around 2.5 foot tall and has a slight lean on it towards our side, but not as severe a lean as the breeze block wall was.

I’m assuming a 2.5 foot high single skinned brick wall with a lean isn’t very safe or sustainable…

What are my options (ideally cheapest option and something I can do myself) for making this wall safe?

I have toyed with the idea of taking out the bottom row of breeze blocks and then adding in either concrete lintels or timber posts that are plumb and then screwing through these into the brick. Will this suffice or do I need to build up a new plumb block wall? Or worst case, does the leaning brick wall need to come down too…?

The white rendered wall is the corner of the neighbours house, so you can see how much higher it is and how close their house is to the boundary.

Thanks all.

 

[Alec_t]

Have you confirmed the ownership of both walls?

 

[jj4091]

My guess would be that your neighbours Budlea tree has contributed to the wall leaning and needs removing before you do anything else.

 

[Odds]

Aye. Chop it off as near to the ground as you can then a healthy dose of glyphospahte should see it off. Bloody things are a menace.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Did you try to determine ownership beforehand? It doesn't look like it was in imminent danger of collapsing.

 

[eddyf]

So this photo was from further back into the garden and this part basically all collapsed by itself during a night of very heavy rain. It was after this collapse that I then decided to take the rest of the breeze block wall down before it came down itself.

The brick wall at this section of the wall is a lot more plumb so I’m not too worried about this part. It’s more the section at the front where it narrows which I am more concerned about.

I was planning on cutting out the tree and adding glyphosate so hopefully that should stop any further pressure on the wall.

In terms of who has ownership/responsibility for the wall, I’ve not looked into this yet. We are very friendly with the neighbours and they’ve come and had a look and offered a helping hand. Any work I can do myself, such as knocking the wall down and removing the rubble, I’m happy to do myself. If it does end up that we need to pay for an engineer/building/landscaper to come in then the neighbours are happy to contribute 50/50 - even if they own that wall, I’d still be happy to pay for half.

My latest budget DIY idea was to get 3 or 4 concrete lintels (as below) and fit these standing upright at equal intervals (around 4 foot apart) into a solid concrete base using concrete screws and brackets and have them up against the wall. I’d keep the lintels plumb so they would be an inch or so off the base of the wall but then be screwed into the top brick.

And then finally add some timber battens between the lintels and then clad the lot to hide the ugly wall.

Much easier and cheaper option than building another wall up again…

 

[Why Not Indeed]

My latest budget DIY idea was to get 3 or 4 concrete lintels (as below) and fit these standing upright at equal intervals (around 4 foot apart) into a solid concrete base using concrete screws and brackets and have them up against the wall.

I don't think screws and brackets is a goer here. If there's enough force to push a wall over then it's going to take some pretty serious screws to resist being pulled out, as well as needing something equally serious to fix in to. If you are going to take the lintel approach then I think you need to fix it in like it's a fence post, ie dig a hole for the post and concrete it in.

 

[Why Not Indeed]

My guess would be that your neighbours Budlea tree has contributed to the wall leaning

It probably has, but I would expect a small bulge, not the wall to be leaning for so much of its length. There seems to be an entire building about a foot from that buddleia, that has to be sharing some of the blame here.