Comments please: Retaining wall design

Hi, I am trying to design my retaining wall clear of the 900mm easement (from the boundary). The easement is for the next-door neighbour's maintenance of their zero-boundary garage. One of the designs that my landscaper has suggested is as above. Is there any merit to this design? I have consulted this with an engineer and he was okay but just commented that I would lose a little bit of side space access.

Is your house already built? What stops you from extending the soil all the way to the house wall and use it as a retaining wall?

350 mm is really not a lot of space esp. if you would need to maintain/clean your drain in the future?

Yes Alex. Unfortunately, it is already built And I haven’t realised the problem until after both houses have been almost completed. I was told that house wall is not meant to hold soil back and it also has weep holes on the lower course of bricks where you can’t go further up with backfilling. The level of the Placement of drain Is basically where the maximum height of what my house wall can handle

Yes, considering it is already built - not much can be done. Drainage cleaning may be bit of an issue with 350 mm wide drain, so why don't you want to consider it extending a bit further towards the fence (right up to the easement)?

Hi Alex,

Thanks for your reply again. Yes, probably extend it a bit to the easement. With that design, I will have 900mm of walking space and around 450mm for the drain. I'm just tossing about how much is enough space from the wall's edge to my house. Having said that, I'm not even sure If I can walk on top of the retaining wall. I'll probably just need to do this if I need to take out the rubbish bins on a weekly basis.

you can, the wall should be able to hold your weight easily