Hoping someone can assist me with this. Proud of our new wall & did some preliminary landscaping in the summer by creating a rock feature along the leading edge. Under the rocks we put black paper down. Early season thaw shows some pooling & I’m curious if this is an issue. Past spring the wall kept all melted snow at bay nicely. Opinions greatly appreciated 🙂
by Visual-Constant-4815
10 Comments
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What type of Geotextile did you use and did you install any actual drainage pipe?
Is there any drainage installed behind the wall? Weeping tile or something like that? If the ground is frozen the water cannot percolate down through the soil so that could be causing the pooling. Should have clear stone installed on the backside of the wall, homes for drainage at the base of the wall to allow water to escape.
Well if the ground is still frozen then it won’t drain.
Early spring pooling is always related to unthawed ground below. You should be more concerned with pooling in the warm months because that will indicate your drainage is blocked (or non-existent).
Retaining walls need properly designed and installed drainage.
When you install a retaining wall, after it is built, it should be backfilled with roughly a 12” width of clear/clean stone from the bottom of your wall to the top. Then there should be some holes through the bottom layer of your wall. This will allow excess water to flow down the backside of the wall( where it’s pooling) and escape through the holes in the bottom. This is pretty important as retaining walls fail mostly due to excessive moisture, water and weight pushing against the backside. The paper/fabric itself is doubt is the problem. Could just be the ground is saturated and can’t take more water, the ground is frozen and won’t take water, or there is no drainage installed and water has no place to go.
Some landscape fabrics have better permeability than others, even when they say permeable, lots of limited regulation in what companies can claim. Obviously something isn’t draining properly, if the only real change is the landscape fabric Id replace with a different variety, I’ve never had issues with spun fabric personally, but all will slow down drainage to some extent.
There’s no outflow, as a temporary fix I’d drill some 2” holes about 6” from the bottom every 10’ or so to act as weeps.
We don’t get snow and freezing weather much where I live so it’s not as much of an issue. But for you the constant expansion and contraction of that much water will cause problems down the road.
A permanent more costly time consuming fix would be dig down the upper side and install a drain pipe at the bottom elevation of this wall.
It’s retaining too much water