Advice pls: Earth retaining wall repairs

[Udhi]

Hi all,
I hope someone could point me in the right direction with this:

Our house is built on the side of a slope. We have a road at the front, we are downhill of it. There is a "stage" of earth at the road's height paved in brick. This is our car parking area or "drive" it is surrounded on three sides by a brick retaining wall. The fourth side being the road and pavement. The stage walls are about 7 foot high. The stage area is about 15 feet by 15 feet (4m x 4m)?

There are big cracks on the retaining walls surrounding the stage. I suspect its because the previous build being not upto standard.

First question is what kind of repairer would I request to deal with this? I dont think a normal builder is going to cope?

What do you think would the job entail? Any idea of costs??

More auestions as we go along!

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

You'll need a structural engineer to design a retaining wall design and there's no need for a specialist builder, any builder competent enough to do it will do. But do not allow a builder to do it as he pleases 'because he's done lots this way'. A beasty like that needs designing that's why it failing now and it's a potential killer if it ever goes! Got a pic or two and some pics of everything not just a pic of a crack.

 

[Udhi]

Structural Engineer, got it. I knew there was a specialist of some kind for this job but did not know the title. I will find one. Thank you. I will stick some pics up tomorrow, there are cracks appearing to about 10mm and the wall is misaligned along these cracks by about 5-8mm already.

I would be surprised if home insurance will cover this.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Ssearch for a smaller firm or one man band type of SE rather than some big fancy pants big firm, explain it needs to be an economical build.