Hi, please bear with me as I'm a bit of a novice with this kind of stuff!
We currently have a small raised area in the back corner of our garden that's held up by a dry stone retaining wall. It's roughly 2ft high, and around 3m x 3m in the shape of the basic diagram attached (I've also attached a photo to hopefully make things a bit clearer)
What we wanted to do was make this area a bit larger into a more useable space to sit on in the summer as it's a north facing garden, so we were looking to build an rendered wall outside of this (the blue area in the attached diagram) and fill in/patio the top.
Just trying to figure out the best way to go about this. As we were planning to render it, was planning just to use blocks like this with damp-proof membrane on the soil side and some drainage, then get someone to render the outside.
The new area would be about 3.5m x 3.5m with a small bit around the side of the steps that are already there to sort of bring the steps inside the structure instead of outside if that makes sense.
Had suggestions to make the foundations about 300mm deep and twice the width of the blocks so 200mm wide, but I'm concerned that might be too little - looking at the retaining wall section here suggests we might want more blocks at the bottom? Maybe have it two blocks wide at the bottom, or even build the wall with them flat?
Any advice would be appreciated, especially if I'm thinking in completely the wrong direction here!
We currently have a small raised area in the back corner of our garden that's held up by a dry stone retaining wall. It's roughly 2ft high, and around 3m x 3m in the shape of the basic diagram attached (I've also attached a photo to hopefully make things a bit clearer)
What we wanted to do was make this area a bit larger into a more useable space to sit on in the summer as it's a north facing garden, so we were looking to build an rendered wall outside of this (the blue area in the attached diagram) and fill in/patio the top.
Just trying to figure out the best way to go about this. As we were planning to render it, was planning just to use blocks like this with damp-proof membrane on the soil side and some drainage, then get someone to render the outside.
The new area would be about 3.5m x 3.5m with a small bit around the side of the steps that are already there to sort of bring the steps inside the structure instead of outside if that makes sense.
Had suggestions to make the foundations about 300mm deep and twice the width of the blocks so 200mm wide, but I'm concerned that might be too little - looking at the retaining wall section here suggests we might want more blocks at the bottom? Maybe have it two blocks wide at the bottom, or even build the wall with them flat?
Any advice would be appreciated, especially if I'm thinking in completely the wrong direction here!
