retaining wall

You need a civil engineering contractor, not general builder.

Agreed^

i`m a civil eng, but i`m an air conditioned office highways designer, not a wellies and boots kind civil eng you need.

Where are you based? Its only a small job but most contractors are looking for work and should take this up. At the end of the day its ordering a few gabions, digging a hole and placing them, you could always ask them to backfill behind the gabions to level out the garden, assuming some of it has gone missing down the stream.

Contractors i have worked with, mainly west midlands/ worcestershire way:

Hawk- might be a bit small for them
PM Harris (These dude's are cheap and this simple work would be up their alley- they also travel a fair bit- just spec stuff up front)
Owen Pell (hereford)

i`ll see if i can get soem more reputable names if you tell me where you are, through contacts at work or old uni mates in the industry across the country.

At the end of the day you need a contractor thats got equipment to take the gabions off the delivery vehicle, excavate a suitable opening (will prob be the same backacker/ digger).

For the contractor all he has to do is measure up the required no of gabions, order them in and set a delivery date. get the equipment over to you for delivery day and he'll possibliy just have two men there, a driver and a banksman/eng/supervisor.

i would set the gabions in the ground so they sit flush or below with your garden, you could then hide them by growing stuff on top, although it may go missing when it floods! You could maybe install your fence posts into you gabion too.

You will need a gabion matress as per the river erosion example in the link below, this should stop the gabion being undermined and putting you back at square 1.

http://www.weld-mesh.com/gabionstandarddesign.html

I`d give these guys a call and ask them to spec up a matress and wall solution which is suitable- they wont bite. Also ask if they have any contractors to recommend in your area.

you have about 10m of length, so 10 gabions, plus the matress of 10m length.

According to my 2010 spons estimating book (god i`m a geek), Maccaferri or or other equal gabions should be approx £220 for a 1m cube- inclusive of materials and labour for placing. That does not include excavation, mobilisation and profit for the contractor though.

£220x 10 for gabions
assume same for mattress, so £4,400 in materials.

Add on some delivery charges and cost for excavator and i`d say you are looking something like your 6.5k budget for your wall- maybe less if you can find a good contractor who's not trying to rip you off.

i`d question quotes over 7k, ask them for a bill of quantities if you think they are pulling a fast one and we can check their rates/ unit costs.

things to think about are delivery- can a large HGV get outside the house for delivering the gabions, and can you get access to the rear of the property for a backakter digger.

hope that helps and sorry i`m an office eng.

Thank you so much for your advice- am now looking into getting gabion baskets as oppose to a wall. (Have sent you a message Alex)

Just got in late & looked at this again,. The whole undermining thing may be key or not, which brings me back to land reclamation in my yufe. Anyone heard of rip-rap?. It's an old idea but worth a mention I think, particularly if this is near a bend in the brook.

No message in my inbox.

If its easier my email is alexhayes1981(insert@)hotmail(dot)co(dot)uk
Rip- Rap, yep i`ve heard of it as the river engineers use it for creating new river banks and protecting the outside of bends.

I still think it needs a hard engineered solution here. The gabion matress should stop it being undermined.

I was thinking more as in its use to protect against undermining any remedial work. It's a simple but very effective solution.
Probably a whole lot cheaper than a Gabion mattress too

Very true. Gabion matress might be a bit overkill anyway.

had another idea put to me- wondered if anyone has had experience or knows effectiveness of this. The culvert which spews out the torrent of water which has blasted my garden has an underground pipe whichruns for about half a mile under a farmers' field brefore it comes out under the bridge at the start of my garden. Could I just extend that pipe the length of the garden - covering it with soil- hey presto - no thundering mass to put the fear of god into me every time there's heavy rain. The contractor says he would put stone 'wings' at the other end where it would come out to deflect the water more gently than is happening now. Any ideas anyone??

Sounds like that culvert is the culprit, water flows too freely in it and its causing you issue.

I`d stay away from extending the culvert, it will not be cheap, and SEPA will possibly want to see river modelling calcs etc. These calcs will show that the problem exists, and you have moved it downstream and not solved it-, plans not approved and your have a consultant engineers bill for 10k.

if that quarry you were on about were to place/drop accidently some boulders at the end of the culvert to slow the flows, that might help... although someone upstream may get backing up issues, and come looking to find out who has blocked up the flow. Then you are back to square 1, not an easy one to answer i`m afraid.

SEPA need to be consulted on this one if you are considering doing works outside of your boundary (which i believe is the mid point of the watercourse)

sorry to hear you are still having issues.

Hooray, all finished!! Can sleep in bed at night now when it rains without rushing out in my nightie with a torch to check that I've still got a garden!
Gabions were put in this week, no easy job as the snow melted at the start of the job causing a great torrent from the culvert again for the contractors to work in, trying to divert it was difficult but they managed with pipes, sandbags etc.
Still having an issue with the council who I believe should be addressing the problems caused by the speed, volume and force of water coming out of the culvert and the scour it's causing to the stream bed. We tried to get them to agree to put in a mattress whilst the contactor was doing the work for me but no such luck. But we'll keep fighting!
Will post some pictures shortly.

mousiemouth said:

Hooray, all finished!! Can sleep in bed at night now when it rains without rushing out in my nightie with a torch to check that I've still got a garden!
Gabions were put in this week, no easy job as the snow melted at the start of the job causing a great torrent from the culvert again for the contractors to work in, trying to divert it was difficult but they managed with pipes, sandbags etc.
Really pleased with the work JML Contracts of Auchterarder have done for me. Couldn't have got better; John Langley is the best! His team worked like Trojans. Alex -your estimates were spot on!
Still having an issue with the council who should be addressing the problems caused by the pressure of water coming out of the culvert and the scour it's causing to the stream bed. We tried to get them to agree to put in a mattress whilst JML were doing the job for me but no such luck. But we'll keep fighting!


Will post some pictures shortly.

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Brilliant!

Where are the photo's?

The gabion baskets lasted 18 months. As more and more water is being introduced upstream to alleviate flooding problems elsewhere, it is ending up coming through this culvert at a faster rate and the gabions have subsequently been blasted out of the water by the undermining force of the water as it spews out of the culvert whenever there is more than a shower. What do I do now???

Buy a boat

On a serious note my grandparents had similar issues, in the end they used a company that deals more with tidal erosion who used simple sledge hammer tactics! I dont know the proper name for it but they diverted the water around the area dug a big trench and through looooooads of rebar and marine concrete at it. that was 15 years ago and its still goioing strong

Have you checked your property title etc to see if there are any references to the watercourse? Riparian owners are normally responsible for any maintenance and free flow etc but there are exceptions so it is worth double checking.

Bozo here.

If your builder doesn't do your footings adequately, you'll be revisiting this in the future, £6.5k or not

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Shytalkz was spot on. ( anyone know where he is btw)

Can you post up some new images mousie please.