Cast-in-Place Retaining Wall
A cast-in-place concrete retaining wall formed and poured on site to hold a grade change between infill lots.
Overview
A cast-in-place concrete retaining wall on Eatherly Drive in Nashville, formed and poured on site rather than assembled from block. The wall holds a grade change running along the property line of an infill build, and finishes as a continuous smooth face with no joints or courses across it.
The Challenge
Infill lots in Davidson County rarely give you room to work. The wall line ran tight against the neighbouring property with new construction on the other side, so there was no space to batter the grade back or stage materials loosely. Davidson County clay holds water and pushes hard against anything vertical, and unlike a block wall, a cast-in-place wall gives you exactly one attempt: once the concrete goes in the forms, the geometry is permanent.
How We Built It
The footing was excavated below the active clay zone and reinforced before any forming started, because the footing decides whether a wall stays plumb. Formwork was built and braced to hold line and plumb under the pressure of wet concrete, with reinforcement tied continuously through the wall rather than stopping at panel joins. Concrete was chute-placed directly from the truck in a continuous run so there were no cold joints in the finished face, then drainage aggregate and backfill went in behind the wall to relieve hydrostatic pressure rather than letting it accumulate.
The Result
A continuous structural wall with a clean formed face, holding the grade change without the stepped courses and open joints of a block system. The drainage behind it is the part nobody sees, and it is the part that decides whether the wall is still straight in ten years.
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