Block walls and retaining walls are one of the best ways to transform you property while keeping it safe and secluded. Danny Ruiz and his team of Ventura County masonry contractors are the best in the business. Retaining walls have a wide variety of use and purpose to your landscape aesthetics and perfunctory needs. Since retaining walls can be made from various types of materials, the look and feel you want is easily customizable. You can have a slump stone retaining wall or one made from stone, rock, and concrete; pretty much whatever aligns with your taste and the style of your property. Not only will it break up the look of your property and make it look larger and more expansive, but it will also retain and reinforce soil.
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Block Retaining Walls near Ventura County Can Help to Make Contoured Land More Usable
Retaining walls retain earth or any other substances and are useful to prevent erosion, and to create different levels in any property. They are a solution for plots that have contours and can be used to change steep slopes into level grounds at two or more levels.
Retaining walls act to retain the backfill of the earth by the sheer weight of the wall, though in the case of reinforced concrete other factors may come into consideration. They can be constructed of many different materials like brick, stone or concrete. Wood and steel have also been used for building retaining walls. The choice of the material can be made depending on the soil characteristics, the height of the wall, conditions of ground water and availability of materials.
Retaining walls must have a proper design that is both aesthetically appealing and structurally sound. The earth that is retained by these walls causes a lateral pressure on them that the wall must be able to resist. The weight of the wall prevents the wall from being overturned by this lateral pressure. It must also be able to resist any sliding forces that the earth can impose. Lateral earth pressures can be calculated by studying the type of soil and the weight that it has. All soils have a natural angle of repose, and the earth that is more than this angle contains the portion of earth that causes the lateral pressure that needs to be resisted by the wall.
The moisture content of the soil can cause this angle of repose to change and must be taken into consideration. Ground water conditions can cause the lateral earth pressure to vary, and to control this, most retaining walls are provided with weep holes at regular intervals, horizontally and vertically, so that water can be allowed to escape before it affects the soil and causes changes in the lateral pressure. A build up of water has been known to overturn retaining walls.
Block walls are the easiest to construct and can help to create the necessary landscaping levels that you desire in a property that has a lot of contours. Blocks are of a regular size and this can help to give the constructed wall the desired aesthetics. These walls must have a proper foundation and the total weight of the wall must be able to resist the pressure of the earth by a factor of safety, which is kept at about two. Stone can also be used to build retaining walls. Some of the cheapest retaining walls can be build with stone that is available from excavations within a property. A wall can even be build of stone blocks just placed over each other without any mortar, as the weight of the stone gives the necessary stability.
Firms like VenCo Construction are experienced in the building of retaining and block walls and can undertake a complete contract that includes the design. They will visit your property to judge the requirements, suggest various altrnatives and designs and give estimates for the work. Once a proper contract is drawn up, they will undertake the work, use the blocks or other materials that have been approved and build a retaining wall that will be a matter of pride for the property owner.
A proper block retaining wall must be higher than the ground that it supports, so that water is not able to flow over it. It should have weep holes and other methods to drain excess water that must be led into proper drains, so that the area below the wall does not become messy.
