Building a cantilever retaining wall in the Amazon! (I need help)
Hello,
So, I´m not an engineer, I´m an Australian who recently bought a house here in Sao Gabriel Da Cachoeira, a small town in the Brasilian Amazon. My neighbor, has been happily digging away at the base of my house (built on a hill) to make room for new extensions to his shack. The dirt has of course been falling away, on top of the shack, and eating away at the hill so that the top of the drop has almost reached the base slab of my house. My neighbor also recently cut down some trees which seemed to be holding the hill in place, adding to the problem.
So then the bottom line is its up to me (rich gringo) to spend a lot of money and make it better again, before my house falls on top of my neighbor.
Problem is, there is very little expertise here. I have serious doubts about the one and only ´engineer´ here in the town. (He has designed several things here which have fallen down, including several other retaining walls).
I´ve been looking on line, and have decided that the cantilever retaining wall is the best design for the job. The height of the drop is three meters. I have about 2 meters of space to dig a footing, (a heal and a toe I think they are called), and I wanted to include a ´key´ beneath this footing to prevent sliding.
Here is what I have decided, let me know if this sounds OK...
Firstly, the height of the wall is 3m.
The width of the wall will be 30cm, from top to bottom. The length of the toe about 1.2m, and the length of the heal about 40cm.
The width of the heal and toe will be about 50cm, and the key under that (of similar width) will go down about 60cm more.
Hope this is all OK.
Anyway, my question is, how should I go about arranging the metal reinforcement? Should I space the rods every 25cm for example? Should there be thick reinfoircement rods running both horizontally and vertically, or just vertically with smaller reinforcing rods running horizontally to hold it in place? I´ve never done anything like this before, so I need the basic basic info on how to arrange the metal rods.
Also, I´m thinking of extending the slab of the house to meet with the top of the wall. This would provide better support I´m sure. I can´t imagine it would be a problem? Its a big house, the lateral pressure of the wall is not going to drag the house anywhere. But I just wanted to check on this point, since I couldn´t find anything online about attaching the top of a retaining wall to the slab of the house its protecting.
Any advise would be great. The builders start digging tomorrow, so the sooner I hear back from you guys the better 😀
Thanks,
Alex.
PS. emails would be better: #-Link-Snipped-#
So, I´m not an engineer, I´m an Australian who recently bought a house here in Sao Gabriel Da Cachoeira, a small town in the Brasilian Amazon. My neighbor, has been happily digging away at the base of my house (built on a hill) to make room for new extensions to his shack. The dirt has of course been falling away, on top of the shack, and eating away at the hill so that the top of the drop has almost reached the base slab of my house. My neighbor also recently cut down some trees which seemed to be holding the hill in place, adding to the problem.
So then the bottom line is its up to me (rich gringo) to spend a lot of money and make it better again, before my house falls on top of my neighbor.
Problem is, there is very little expertise here. I have serious doubts about the one and only ´engineer´ here in the town. (He has designed several things here which have fallen down, including several other retaining walls).
I´ve been looking on line, and have decided that the cantilever retaining wall is the best design for the job. The height of the drop is three meters. I have about 2 meters of space to dig a footing, (a heal and a toe I think they are called), and I wanted to include a ´key´ beneath this footing to prevent sliding.
Here is what I have decided, let me know if this sounds OK...
Firstly, the height of the wall is 3m.
The width of the wall will be 30cm, from top to bottom. The length of the toe about 1.2m, and the length of the heal about 40cm.
The width of the heal and toe will be about 50cm, and the key under that (of similar width) will go down about 60cm more.
Hope this is all OK.
Anyway, my question is, how should I go about arranging the metal reinforcement? Should I space the rods every 25cm for example? Should there be thick reinfoircement rods running both horizontally and vertically, or just vertically with smaller reinforcing rods running horizontally to hold it in place? I´ve never done anything like this before, so I need the basic basic info on how to arrange the metal rods.
Also, I´m thinking of extending the slab of the house to meet with the top of the wall. This would provide better support I´m sure. I can´t imagine it would be a problem? Its a big house, the lateral pressure of the wall is not going to drag the house anywhere. But I just wanted to check on this point, since I couldn´t find anything online about attaching the top of a retaining wall to the slab of the house its protecting.
Any advise would be great. The builders start digging tomorrow, so the sooner I hear back from you guys the better 😀
Thanks,
Alex.
PS. emails would be better: #-Link-Snipped-#
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