Regular Wall Maintenance

like a balloon. Behind me is a small portion of a 30 plus thousand square ft retaining wall we built over a decade ago. Now even though this company devel invested millions of dollars into the infrastructure of this property, they failed at one important component and that's maintaining their retaining walls. And the most important and easily upkept thing that you can do on a retaining wall is to make sure that the grades stay flush behind the back of the block. This is a great example of what happens when you allow the grades to fall behind the wall. They're going to find cavities. I can reach in and put my whole hand inside this cavity behind this retaining wall. And you can see other cavities and that's going to create premature failure in in this retaining wall. Often times I see retaining walls, even massive ones like this, get neglected. And when that neglect sets in, failure will rapidly occur. So what you can see is they've actually allowed the vegetation to grow right through the face of the retaining wall. That's how far the neglect has gotten on this site. What happens when that vegetation grows through is it creates gapage in the blocks. As the as the plants grow, the roots expand and they create spacing in the blocks. That spacing is a cavity for the aggregate behind it to flow right through the face of the retaining wall. That also creates funnel points where the water is going to want to migrate instead of dispersing evenly behind the retaining wall. It's now going to find a spot and it's going to puncture through that retaining wall, creating potential issues during heavy rainstorms. Here's another great rule of