Wet Stone Wall To Surround Building Land

[dressedingreen]

We're about to commence a new house build later this year on a Rai of land. We need to raise the land a little first, and are commencing the building of a wet stone retaining wall for about a 60cm rise in land height, and the basis for a final wall around the finished property. The wall contractor began yesterday, having dug out the trench over the weekend. The total wall length, adding all 4 sides, will be about 250m x 1.6m (1m above the soil level, 0.6m below). We had a significant downpour yesterday, and another today. Having gone to check the early progress, we found areas of the initial foundations that had been laid, under pools of water. Some parts literally submerged. Basic common sense tells me this isn't good. There appeared to be no attempt to cover the cement and stone mix that had already been poured into the trench. And the contractor openly admitted they never did such a thing. I stopped them immediately, suggesting they dig out the 'mush' and replace it when the rains stopped, covering it afterward in case of more rain. This, they told me, would be extra. What they had done, I told them, would not be paid for until we had chance to get an engineer (or professional equivalent) in to advise on the safety (or otherwise) of the foundations. While it may not show up immediately, foundations that are laid in torrential rain are unlikely to give of their best over the same period of time as those laid in dry weather, or at least covered while 'funtock' rages. The boss contractor offered his personal guarantee that if there were problems he would attend to them in the future. You won't be surprised to hear I looked around for a large dollop of salt to swallow with this story.

We're going to chat to our local Tessaban office tomorrow, in the hope they may have a department/professional persons who can advise on such a problem. I'm assuming they don't condone bad building practice in their area. And I'm also hoping that involving them at this early stage will give us any ammunition required if we decide to sack this lot and refuse to pay for the shabby work already done.

If anyone has any experience/suggestions/comments that may be helpful, I'd be grateful to hear them.

TIA

DIG

[Benjie]

It's a small wall, with nearly 40% of it under the earth - Sounds to me like you are worrying too much.

[sezze]

Yep , for a small wall this isn't any problem . BTW , the water will come in the trenches anyway , if it isn't straight from above , then its running in sideways ( surrounding ground ) or from the walls or from the bottom . 60cm deep trenches all the way round is way overkill for a 1 m high wall anyway .