Retaining walls are the most effective physical barrier against flash floods, land sliding, erosion, and slumping hillsides. They can protect your property while maintaining its functional and visual appeal.

Building a retaining wall, however, is nothing like a simple wall or boundary construction. A lot of thought, design, and engineering expertise go into the process.

Before installing a retaining wall, Mountain Movers Engineering Co.’s expert design engineers thoroughly assess construction or project site conditions. They take the space, ground conditions, size, and various other factors into account before coming up with a design. For optimum performance, retaining walls must meet strict criteria consisting of balanced loads and forces.

Let’s talk about these technicalities in detail.

1. Lateral Earth Pressure

Lateral earth pressure is the first element that lays down the foundation for creating a retaining wall. It’s preset to retain soil on the ground surface before, during, and after installation.

Lateral earth pressure is defined as the horizontal pressure exerted by soil. It impacts the overall binding and stability strength on the soil level, ensuring its ability to balance a retaining wall. Earthwork and retaining wall builders follow the sliding wedge concept when designing a retaining wall.

2. Surcharge Loads

In addition to horizontal pressures like lateral earth pressure, a retaining wall also has to bear vertical forces. The ground applies a surcharge load creating an adjacent pressure and acting as backfill for the wall.

Highway surcharges, backfill compaction surcharges, and adjacent footing surcharges are common load types affecting your retaining wall design.

3. A Retaining Wall’s Structural Weight

The next thing the retaining wall design team has to study is the final product’s probable weight. It includes all the components, such as the footing, base, bearing, and the wall itself. Assessing ground conditions and forces is essential to ensure the stability and strength required to hold a retaining wall in place.

4. Wind Forces and Seismic Pressure

Yes, the wind force and the earth’s seismic pressure are quite critical for a retaining wall installation plan. Your retaining wall will be exposed to external weather conditions, including strong winds and earthquake shocks. Therefore, the design team will invest time in computing maximum level wind force and velocity.

This helps decide the correct wall positioning, earthwork requirements, and retaining wall material.

How Can Mountain Movers Engineering Co. Help You?

When it comes to high-quality retaining wall installation and earthwork services in California, no one does it better than us. At Mountain Movers Engineering Co., we’ve built credibility with our quality services and unmatched customer experience.

Our projects include residential, commercial, and industrial sites where we have performed excellent earthwork, grading, slope wall repair, retaining wall installation, and more.

Dive deeper into our service portfolio, or call us now for further discussion.

The topmost layer of ground is soil replete with nutrients and essential minerals for plant growth. It’s also referred to as the bearer of all life forms on our planet. However, several reasons can affect the ground’s stability and balance, leading to erosion and damage.

Ground erosion can happen in many ways. It doesn’t just pertain to soil erosion that leads to plant and crop damage. Ground erosion can happen anywhere if proper prevention strategies aren’t implemented to maintain ground balance.  

In this blog, our Mountain Movers Engineering Co. team has discussed the main reasons behind soil/ground erosion and a few effective prevention techniques. So let’s get into the detail right away!

Reasons for Ground Erosion

Here are the top reasons for ground erosion:

Harsh Weather

Thunderstorms and heavy rain is the leading cause of soil or ground erosion. Rain is essential to maintain plant growth and nutrition. However, severe and heavy rainfall events can lead to widespread ground damage. Rain and strong winds can also result in rill, gully, sheet, and splash erosion.

Raindrops disperse the softer layer on the ground and penetrate deeper ground levels. Frequent rainfall can create basins and potholes and prove quite hazardous for sloped grounds, especially in mountainous regions.

Land Sliding

Land sliding is a common problem people face in hilly or mountainous areas. Earthquakes, rainfall, and storms make the ground fragile and cause a destructive movement of rocks and stones. Land sliding occurs due to the gravity influence.

Experts suggest that land sliding is a major reason behind mass wastage, but it’s entirely preventable. We offer high-end retaining wall installation and earthwork services in CA. You can talk to us about how to restore land sliding damages and prevent it from happening again.

Other common reasons that may lead to ground erosion include grazing, the soil type, deflation, and lack of vegetation.

Here’s how you can prevent ground erosion and its adverse effects:

1. Plant more trees and shrubs to control water flow during monsoon seasons
2. Invest in professional mulch matting to maintain the ground level stability
3. Construct heavy-duty retaining walls to prevent floods, rain, and earthquakes from causing ground erosion
4. Maintain a proper drainage system to prevent water from creating basins within the ground
5. Construct an anchor wall for better protection
6. Opt for a wire basket wall to prevent soil erosion and land sliding while improving your property’s aesthetic quality

Partner with Mountain Movers Engineering Co. Today

We’re a leading retaining wall construction company with extensive industry experience. Mountain Movers Engineering Co. has successfully built approximately 10 million SF of retaining walls across CA.

Our team specializes in studying every project’s unique requirements to curate a tailored solution. You can talk to us to avail high-quality and professional grading for commercial projects, slope wall repair and restoration, retaining wall service, and extensive land sliding repair.  

Contact us or check out our projects today.