leaning garden wall

[svouts]

My garden wall is 20' long, 5' high and 9'' thick. The last 3 years stared leaning towards my garden. Is it possible to repair it without rebuilding it?

 

[theprinceofdarkness]

What age is the wall?, if its say, 20 years old then the foundation are insufficient. Is there something leaning on the other side? - earth?. Bad drainage your side?
Tall structures (like chimney stacks) have a habit of leaning towards the South - Its to do with unequal expansion of one side due to the sun.
I have straightened up a 9' high Victorian wall with a 6" lean on the top, but then again 6" in 100 years, should be good for another 100 years!
Frank

 

[svouts]

It was next to a big tree, which i cut last week. Now i need to fix the wall. I am not sure how old it is, at least 30 years but possibly older. How did you manage to straighten the wall?

 

[theprinceofdarkness]

It was a 100' Victorian garden wall (LIME mortar) terminating in a 9' high pillar that was one side of an arch for a door. Over the years both pillars had developed a lean (towards the South) by about 9" and seemed to be dangerous, so they were taken down. When I did this, I saw that the pillar had dragged the last panel of the wall out of true. I have forgotten exactly how, but I strapped some 4" X 2" diagonally across the wall end and just hauled it back true. The pointing cracked on the inside of the bend and the corners of the bricks crushed a bit on the outside. I was very disappointed. However when the pillars were rebuilt and the wall repointed, it looked great.
So did the tree roots lift the edge of the foundations? - you don't say which side the tree and the lean is. If it was the tree, as the roots root, I would say that the wall will come upright - might take 30 years?
Frank

 

[svouts]

i am not sure if it is the tree. the wall leans towards the tree. I would say that my side of the wall has not been re-pointed for many years while the other side is re-pointed. so the wall is giving in towards my side.