Most of the walls I build are in well established neighborhoods. Now, I have a client with a newly constructed home that requests an allen block type wall at the front right corner. Is the soil around the foundation likely to settle, wreaking havov with the new wall? Should I wait a year or go ahead and build? Thanks!
Depends how close to the foundation your wall will be. Search this forum... I've seen great info before. The soil will settle the first winter, slightly the next. Most wait till after the first winter season to build hardscaping. If I remember right, you may be ok building a wall four feet from the foundation. I'd wait too, warranty your work next year and get the client on the sched with a deposit. Ryan
Ryan is correct. Be very careful with these situations. Remember sometimes many feet of fill has simply been placed in around the foundations w/ no good compaction. Just compacting with a plate or even a jumping jack won't help a whole lot. Most plates are good for only a few inches of compaction. I can't remember who posted a thread quite a few months back of an overdig detail that went into the whole process of how to address these situations if you need to put a hardscape in ASAP. Try looking this up on here and don't just compact and build right away.
If you wait you might lose the wall to someone else. Sheshovel is right, you need to compact the soil under the wall. I would explain to the people that you need to excuvate to virgin soil and then fill and compact up to the base of the wall. Any engineered wall should require that the base level be checked for compaction before you start the wall. If it is the dirt behind the fill area that you are worried about then figure in extra grid length for the area near the house and extra dranage material also. This should take care of the unstable dirt placed by the house. You didn't tell us if the base of the wall was to start at virgin soil or how much the area for the house was over excuvated (how much non compacted there is up against the foundation).
