Driveway Retaining Walls?

Croatan_Kid

Croatan_Kid

How's your hammer hangin'?
Joined
Nov 4, 2007
Location
New Bern
What's the best way to fix my driveways? Pictures to follow. I want to do new retaining walls, I guess you could call them. I'm thinking dig them out and build whatever I'm going to build and then backfill behind them. It probably needs to be able to keep the dirt from washing out between the building materials too.

As you'll see in the picture, my main driveway has telephone poles along the sides. They're ready to be replaced as they've served their purpose for just about 40 years. It's also very rounded up in the middle, so I'm going to scrape the rock back, fill in the sides, and then level it back out.

My second driveway will have another culvert added to make it closer to 40 feet wide. Not that it will make a difference, but I felt like mentioning it. I will also be adding another culvert and ditch crossing so you can get from the far driveway to the front yard for parking. So I will be doing a total of three driveways...I forsee this getting pricey.

What do you guys thinks? Suggestions for building materials? Pictures help! If I could get another 40 years out of them, that'd be awesome.
 

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What do you mean rounded in the middle?? Is it high or low? Low is bad , little high is good . Referred to as "crown". Helps drive shed water and not run down the middle or puddle water. In my opinion it's all about the base.(not bass like the song). It's hard to beat ABC or crush/run or whatever they may call it in your area. I'm buy no means a drive expert but I have a 1 mile driveway and have some experience fixing one and have learned a little about what does and doesn't seem to work.
 
Through the years of it getting fixed, they just layered shit down the middle. If you get off the sides at all, it gives you the feeling of backing off the sides. A little crown is fine, but from the middle to the sides above those telephone poles is close to a foot. That's just too much.
 
On the first one, I would likely dig out the telephone poles and ~1 ft or so at the end of the culvert and pour a concrete wall back in its place. I would likely drive some rebar deep into the ground first and tie a few horizontal to help everything stay in place. If it is holding now, I dont see the need to dig out the base and completely redo; just remove the rotting wood and rebuild to keep it from washing.

I would likely do the same on the second one, but not exactly sure what is going on at the close end of the picture? Is the ditch just washed out, or does it turn into some retaining pond?
 
It's partially washed out, but that's where the other piece of culvert will be and it will get covered to widen the driveway. There's a culvert coming under the road that you can't see and to the right is a ditch that runs through my property.

Pouring concret walls doesn't sound very cheap....I'll be doing this to three different driveways, so six sides all together.
 
Croatan_Kid said:
It's partially washed out, but that's where the other piece of culvert will be and it will get covered to widen the driveway. There's a culvert coming under the road that you can't see and to the right is a ditch that runs through my property.

Pouring concret walls doesn't sound very cheap....I'll be doing this to three different driveways, so six sides all together.
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concrete might not be very cheap... a quick calculation of 1ft thick by 3ft deep by 10ft long says you would need ~7yds of concrete to do all 6. You could spread out the cost by building the forms yourself and mixing/pouring your own, as you work on each one.

Could also use block I guess, but I would want to rebar/mortar/fill them so they didnt move.

Could also put pipe and culvert boxes/drains in the entire length of the ditch, and then just backfill with dirt/gravel. Could also fill the ditch with rip-rap or other large stone, but that tends to breed snakes, mosquitoes, and alot of weed-eating.

Or fix the ditch so that it flows correctly and isnt washed out, and leave the banks dirt/gravel.
 
7 yards of concrete at $140-150/yard is about a grand. Not bad for something that will certainly hold up.
 
Was the wash out due to a 100year rain storm or run of the mill afternoon thunderstorm(s). Might need bigger culverts if the latter
 
I'd put some double wall HDPE of appropriate size and use rail road ties at inlet and outlet to create a small retaining wall to hold the driveway back and use tie backs to anchor it and roll on.

Using just a concrete wall doesn't negate the need to anchor it so it doesn't fall over with soil bearing pressure on just one side. So if you use concrete you'll need to anchor it under the driveway (or however you want) as well.
 
Gonna take a pretty Stought wall to hold up & not move. Concrete blocks or RR ties, aren't gonna help much. Grave/ Stone, moves with traffic, & sinks too. Centers always hump up, but you can keep leveling the centers to the sides, so you don't end up with a foot of fill towering over the sides. The wider, the better, because it will be more natural to drive towards middle, & turns wont be as sharp. Fast turns & sharp turns, pushes the material to the side. I think I like the Aprons. Look up Culvert Aprons, & get more ideas than you need!

 
I'll try to snap a picture. House near me has bags of concrete mix stacked like blocks.

Since your looking for ideas and all.
 
rockcity said:
I'd put some double wall HDPE of appropriate size and use rail road ties at inlet and outlet to create a small retaining wall to hold the driveway back and use tie backs to anchor it and roll on.

Using just a concrete wall doesn't negate the need to anchor it so it doesn't fall over with soil bearing pressure on just one side. So if you use concrete you'll need to anchor it under the driveway (or however you want) as well.
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Agreed. I was assuming it to be 10ft long. Dig into the banks on each side to secure the wall.

Probly still needs some anchors under the road.
 
The only reason the second driveway looks like it does is because that part of my land was just cleared and I had the guy dig up the old, busted, concrete culvert and put that one down. There wasn't previously an issue with washing out, but that's the lowest point of the ditches from either side, unfortunately.

There's literally no way to fix the water runoff without getting the Army Corp of Engineers involved. They funnel water off of the power lines across the road and throughout national forest land right through my property. Nice, right? Everything flows fine and doesn't wash out when it's packed.

I've been thinking Hoover Dam. Gotta anchor in to both sides and make sure it's got a good hold. My original thought was some kind of interlocking blocks that would stack up/inward and I'd dig in to each ditch bank...probably angle them out or curve it and then back fill behind that with some rock to let it breathe.

I had also considered four vertical 4x4s and then 2x12s behind them horizontally, some landscape fabric/silt barrier, then rock like the other option.

Either of those ideas worth a damn? I like the aprons too, just not sure where I can find them around here.
 
The 4x4s and 2x12s suck and will fail. If you don't want to use concrete or blocks, use rail road ties with tie backs. Properly built they can serve as a great retaining wall. Even seen some 11' tall without issues.
 
Damn....they just dug up the railroad bed going in to the back gate of Cherry Point off of Hwy 70. I probably could have gotten a few truck loads for free!

Playing devil's advocate here...aren't most retaining walls along a body of water constructed from wood?

Blocks will be fine and probably fairly easy, I just need to find the right stuff to use.
 
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Use these, slope your soil more gently, and seed or rip rap them. Put a post close to the end to keep people from running off of the edge. These are pre-made products just for this.
11_Armortec_Armorloc_Outfall-Protection.jpg
full
 
Do like the city of Raleigh does. Fill culverts with dirt/trash let water flow down roadways.


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I like the buried culvert idea. I hate mowing ditch lines


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Or you could just not put a wall there. Throw down some 8oz nonwoven geotextile fabric and cover it with some Class A rip rap and be done.
 
I prefer the look of a wall. I'm digging more and more on the railroad ties and I know they'll last a long time. I'd guess layering them horizontally and locking them together with rebar pins would work, wouldn't it? Each end would be dug back in to the ditch bank to keep them from being pushed out and I'd probably add an anchor about mid way, buried in the ground. Is that along the lines of what you were getting at?

Just to be clear, I have never had an issue with my driveways washing out. I need to redo the first driveway and the second one has nothing there, as you can see. Depending on how the third one turns out, it may just get the rip rap treatment as mentioned above.
 
Yeah. Just put some tie backs every so often. It just depends on the size of the wall and the load it will receive. Google will show you how pretty easy.
Even on short walls, you need tie backs or it will eventually fall over and you'll be doing it again.
 
It'll probably be spring before it dries up, so I'll have to wait til then. I'm looking forward to getting it done though!
 
I would personally stay away from rail road tie retaining walls. You are either buying new (don't know if you even can) or pulled ties with a questionable life span remaining. Those ties will deteriorate at some point (quicker with the second picture and standing water often-ish) and have to be replaced. If you are building a wall correctly then that means digging up your entire driveway to redo it. I would go block or sloped
 
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