Where the Alaska Cabin is now I am building the house. It will be a walk out basement to the lower terrice and I will have a retaining wall a ways on each side of the house. I was thinking baout making the retaining wall out of the Gabion baskets. How tall can I go with those? Can I do 8 feet no problem? Seems like a fairly inexpensive yet nice looking way to do it.


Aviator

I remember helping set those in at least that tall, maybe 12' total, when I worked for PennDot one summer when I was in college.  It was around a culvert .  I think it was stacked at least 3' high, and I seem to think the baskets were about 4' tall, and about 8' long.
That was one of the few interesting parts of the job.

Lots of info here.
https://www.gabionsupply.com/retaining-walls.html

I work for a Design/build contractor specializing in earth retention.  As I understand it, as the CFO, gabion walls date back to Roman times.  We have built a few on military bases and they can be both beautiful and functional but there may be a more cost effective solution if you have more info.

edit:  I am drunk, but read the op and you can do a WWF wall cheaper and make it green.  Gabions are awesome but it is a gravity wall Design and that generally means either heavy retained fill or heavy/expensive retained fill.  Do a WWF walll, vegetated, with some geogrid at least ten feet in length.

pM me if you need some more info.

Cool. Will do some more reading.


Aviator

Traditional gabions from Vauban to the Civil War were about three and a half feet tall or so and about 18" wide.  Open ended, after being enplaced they were filled with rocks and dirt and then another behind it such that it could defeat a bullet and allow the sappers to work in relative safety.  Generally if you wanted a wall that was six feet high, you laid down three gabions back to back and then two atop of them (think pyramid).  More gabions are stacked in more protection is required.

Modernly we have Hesco steel and cloth folding cages.  Once opened, dirt is thrown in to fill them and like their wicker woven ancestors, they are stacked.

WWF Wall? I google that and end up with a shit ton of Wildlife Foundation stuff..


Aviator

Night crew?


Aviator

8 ft. should be no problem. Step next row back. Drive t-post in next level through bottom level after bottom is filled with stone.

If you have access to a set of hog ring pliers (rent), it makes assembly much easier.

@Aviator

WWF=welded wire fabric

Thanks guys.



Aviator

they seem cool, but I bet they are a lot of work and upkeep.

Gabions

I worked a lot with that type of construction in Nepal. We used it to create terraces and shore up road beds alongside rivers. If you have the rock available locally (not a problem at the base of the Himalayas ) then it is a very efficient and effective method for such works. The huge benefit is that you do not need any complex or expensive equipment or a highly skilled workforce and productivity is linear, dependent only on how many people you have working. Given enough time, a single man could construct amazing earthworks.

IIRC, one of the keys was to make sure you filled in smaller rocks to support the larger rocks in the matrix. Eventually, the cage gives way and it will be the aggregate effect of the rocks and years of fines settling between them that gives the structure enduring strength.