What Are Retaining Walls?

If you have ever driven around the western coast of the United States, you probably noticed a significant number of retaining walls. There is good reason for this. Retaining walls provide a sense of safety and security that protect life and property from a great number of calamities that can occur.

Those not familiar with the type of geography that requires a preponderance of retaining walls may wonder what their purpose is. Sometimes, they may not even acknowledge the presence of the wall and ask: “How does that house keep from sliding.” To answer that question, you must understand what exactly these types of walls do and how they do it,

Retaining walls primarily counteract soil erosion and keep stabilize both soil and rock so that structures resting atop the soil do not shift or slide downward. As you can assume, property sliding down a hill is not exactly the type of situation one would welcome. And even if there is no home on top of the soil, retaining walls are valuable as they will keep the earth from sliding. An example of this would be keeping a huge mudslide from covering a highway.

Not all retaining walls, however, are utilized to hold back earth and soil. Some of these walls are used to hold back water, although some will say that that is actually a misappropriation of the term retaining wall.

There of several different kinds of these walls and they are usually described in general terms that pinpoint the specific type of wall they are with such names as Modular Wall, Landscaping wall, etc.

From an engineering standpoint, these types of walls are fairly interesting to study. From a humanitarian standpoint, these types of walls provide a very valuable and irreplaceable service. Whoever came up with the blueprints for retaining walls really deserves some thanks.