Rebuilding A Stone Retaining Wall In Ottawa

Rebuilding An Old Stone Retaining Wall

If you own an old property in Ottawa then you may have an old stone retaining wall too. I was asked to re-build the stone retaining wall and dry laid stone steps seen in the first few pictures below.

You can clearly see that the wall is in need of repair, a heavy rainfall could easily bring down sections of the wall that have pushed out over time.

The original plan was to use all the existing stone to rebuild the wall and steps, the old pieces of flagstone used on the steps was in poor condition so I purchased some new flagstone instead. The stone used on the wall is all the original stone but it’s been trimmed/chipped so it looks a little different.

I pulled down the old wall and steps,  installed a new base and made sure the new wall had good drainage. As I built the retaining wall 3/4″ clear crushed stone was used to fill in behind the wall, it’s also wrapped with a geotextile filter fabric stopping the soil from having contact with the 3/4″ clear crushed stone, any pushing from the soil is now just moving pieces of 3/4″ inch clear crushed stone.