Fail concrete bag retaining wall, absolute retaining wall goes by Robert Burton Richard Burton, Fail

See a marketplace, Craigslist or any other ad for #concretebag retaining wall by this man. Run. Wall fell twice.
560 plus bags useless. He no showed, no response, took payment and ran. Tsk tsk
#robertburton absolute retaining walls
Now I have a mess. #lowes #lowesgarland #robertburton was referred by #lowes #retainingwall

Stared May 15 and here it is July 6th.
Concrete bag wall fails

[peterRobinson]

Obviously 3 years have passed but to anyone attempting this method:
Has it got a base? i couldnt see any foundation pad? not to mention drainage and gravel backfill and rio.
Also it needs to be built on an incline. each bag set back about 1/2"-1" (or more depending on how high its going to be) from the bag beneath it.
When laying the bags hose them down after each layer and place 1 or 2 lines of barbed wire atop each row making sure its wet.
when hammering rio down into the bags make sure the rio is wet as ideally you want the rio to be fully encapsulated otherwise you will get rio rust and cracking. At the back of the wall plastic sheeting down to the drainage is essential to stop tree roots and seepage rhat will after years crack the wall. These walls shouldnt be built in a straight line but as a curved wall are much stronger. You may think your saving money but better to build a proper poured wall.
If you were paying for that job i would be seriously pissed. Built by toddlers making sandcastles.

[yankees]

No drainage stone and holes to allow water to drain. Even block retaining walls need stone drainage of several inches, and holes at the bottom of the wall.

[reaper-sztm]

Where is the rebar and gravel for drainage?

[xaiano]

Looks to be stacked vertically with no setback - these style retaining walls rely upon the weight of the material above them for their stability, not the strength of the wall blocks (that's why you can make them out of dry stone) but you need a certain angle to do that and that depends on the density of the material, I think it's about 12 degrees but I can't remember.
The reason you use concrete is to prevent erosion

The only thing that's required to make this type of gravity retaining wall is that the material is solid and can't slip against the other blocks

[johnmc]

Things that will help another failure... Rebar reinforcement (as another comment mentioned) it's fairly inexpensive too. That anchors the bags together so the wall acts as a whole rather than individual blocks. Also looks like there's little or no setback.
Each new top row of bags should be stacked slightly closer to the uphill side so it slightly "leans" into the hill (much like a pyramid). Lastly, as you mentioned in the audio... drainage. All that water builds up behind the wall and pushes it over. Should be a layer of gravel behind the wall and a french drain at the bottom to keep the ground from getting too saturated behind the wall. Hope you get things back together!

[merlinslair]

Looks like no rebar or drainage was added ive done 5 feet high 4 years ago its nowhere near failing

[jamesmziegler]

It was improperly built. These concrete bag retaining walls work well when done correctly.

[TheTramm]

The should of also driven rebar vertically down through the bags and some going diagonal to lock the bags together.

[michaelinglis]

Im guessing they dodnt use rebar which is must at least every third layer.

[WVgrl]

I'm just an old woman but I see they didn't really stagger them nor use rebar.
One guy suggests taping them together to prevent movement.
But if you don't have drainage behind a wall that will make it fall.

[kenreynolds]

start with gravel, socked drain pipe, proper tilt back, hammer them with rebar stakes. Also, use a 50/50 pattern. Noted they didn't here, bad idea.

[vaughnblaylock]

I don't see any drainage, and I don't see any rebar that attached the wall to itself nor to the embankment. There are you two primary issues. Fix those and you're right as the mail again. The bag method works exceedingly well, but drainage and support cannot be ignored.

[corysmith]

There seem to be no rebar and no delivered structure to the wall. Someone appears to just stacked concrete bags on top of each other. You wouldn’t even do that with stones

[Jackknife-TV]

Why is there no rebar through it? Nor is there any stone drainage behind it...

[emmittmatthews]

Looks like they back filled it before it really set?
No rebar.
No drainage?

[micahwest]

Rebar would have helped but any retaining wall will fail without proper base and drainage.

[Loonypapa]

Bags of sakrete? You get what you pay for.

[mahatmasloth]

too high for no rebar tie in. Each layer should be slightly set back to create a slope, with something that high maybe set the first course perpendicular to create a slight toe for soil to push down on, and needs a weeping tile with rock backfill and fabric membrane and possibly geogrid mesh

[smckay]

Its a bunch of stacked bags !
Its not a wall, let alone a retaining wall!
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

[gabenoria]

No drainage, no rebar to keep them in place, and for that high must be in angle with gravel inside.