Other side and a down the line view of Yosser's wall

Ah well...

Bill

I like DIYing stuff, but it makes me appreciate just how much skill is involved in building. I expect that my first attempt at building a brick wall would look like that.

Better than I could do? ;-)

Tim

Boaster!

But is the soil going to push the wall into the street?

For the wall builder that's a "somebody else's problem" (SEP).

On which see Douglas Adams' "Life, the Universe and Everything":

"An S.E.P. ...is something that we can?t see, or don?t see, or our brain doesn?t let us see, because we think that it?s somebody else?s problem. That?s what S.E.P. means. Somebody Else?s Problem. The brain just edits it out; it?s like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won?t see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye."

It's an art much cultivated by monocular lobby groups.

I doubt it, because I suspect if you built a brick wall you would find out how to design one; and it wouldn't look like that.

It doesn't, but the chip on our shoulders makes us think we have.

If there are no weep holes it will be the water in the soil that pushes the wall over.

I've wondered if a stainless butterfly wire wall tie dotted along the wall with a terylene ratchet strap tape past through and back into the soil for a metre of so would strengthen a single brick retaining wall, with the weep holes too.

It's "functional".

I've had a couple of houses with a similar low retaining wall and never had any problems with the garden pushing the wall out. It's always either a vehicle backing into it during a three-pointer or kids sitting on it while waiting for a bus.

For how long?

Are those class B engineering bricks though ?. The view along the top of the wall makes me think they are. If so, they don't have the suction of normal bricks, and IMHO very difficult to build tidy walls with, which is not an issue when the 'wall' is the four sides of a below-ground sewer access point.

I used engineering bricks for the dwarf (and higher) walls in my conservatory, as they were the closest looking match I could easily get to the existing extension. My first proper attempt at bricklaying, 900 bricks and 125 blocks, and it turned out pretty well.