If you own an old property in the Ottawa area then you may have an old stone retaining wall too. I was asked to rebuild the stone retaining wall and dry laid stone steps seen in the following pictures below.

Damaged Retaining Wall

As you can clearly see this stone wall is in need of repair, perhaps one more heavy rainfall and this could easily bring down sections of the retaining wall that has pushed out over time.

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

Rebuilding The Stone Retaining Wall

In short, the following was completed: 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.