Compaction is
often overlooked in residential wall projects and sometimes under considered in
commercial projects. Whether you are building a small landscape wall or a
large commercial or DOT project compaction is essential to the success of the
project.
Wall rock is
always placed in the cores of the segmental retaining wall (SRW) units and
directly behind the facing to aid in the compaction in and around the
facing. Every Segmental Retaining Wall (SRW) manufacturer’s specification tell the installer to build
and compact their wall project in no more than 8 inch lifts. What does
this mean? It means that when you stack one course of 8 inch block you
must place and compact the wall rock and the infill soils behind the facing
fully before stacking the next course of block.
It is very
simple, NO SRW manufacturer allows any installer to stack 2 or 3 courses of
block and then place the wall rock and infill soils. Doing this WILL NOT
allow for proper compaction levels. The most common compaction level for
commercial projects is 95% of standard proctor which we will not define here.
Typically
compaction is done using a walk behind vibratory plate compactor or in small
landscape project a simple hand tamper.
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