Trench Warfare II

New project: Let's build a stone retaining wall in the backyard! How hard can it be?

In terms of engineering, it's pretty straightforward. But the labor involved? That's another matter.

We decided that the best way to deal with our sloping backyard was to terrace it. The neighbor's soil is at least a foot higher than ours, putting pressure on the fence. And the whole yard slopes, making it hard to walk on or enjoy. So we decided to push some of the dirt back toward the fence, and pull some of it forward. The result, we hope, will be two more-or-less flat areas with a retaining wall between them.

We started by laying out the now-familiar pile of bricks where we wanted the wall to go. You can see them here. The idea is to run part of the new wall straight, then transition into a semicircular curved section on the left side. That way we get a bit more "high" area to stash the excess dirt.

Then we used some boards to mark out the straight portions and to hold back the dirt once we started digging. And there's going to be a lot of digging.

We figure the retaining wall only needs to be about 2 feet high, but that's just the part you can see. We also need to bury part of the wall, for strength, making the whole thing about 32 inches from top to bottom.

Best of all, most of that 32 inches is going to be underground. The whole idea is to lower our average ground level, so we're going to have to dig out... well, pretty much the entire backyard. Question: Where do you put a backyard's-worth of dirt when you're digging up the backyard? Where does it all go?

In big stinkin' piles, that's where. We had to get clever about piling the dirt someplace where we wouldn't have to immediately turn around and move it again. (This strategy was not 100% successful.) The short-term plan was to shovel dirt from the high parts and throw it into the low parts, knowing full well that we'd have to shovel it back in a few days. but where else can it go? We don't have that much room to work with.

It's a bit like one of those puzzles with 15 tiles that you move around, trying to get them all in order. Except the tiles are big mounds of dirt, and it's hot outside.

Eventually, we did manage to dig a straight(-ish) trench to start the wall. We took the opportunity to bury sprinkler pipe, too, although that was almost more trouble than it was worth. Laying the pipe and putting in risers means keeping certain areas clear (no dirt piles) and it creates trip hazards all over the yard. Just adds to the excitement.