Use Cement Bags to Make Concrete Wall
Poking through the racks of free pamphlets in the lumber yard the other day, I came across a really simple idea for building a concrete retaining wall. It’s not the most beautiful wall in the world, but it’s functional, sturdy and takes no skill at all to build. The basic idea? Take bags of ready-mixed concrete, stack them up to form a wall, sprinkle on some water, and that’s it. In time, the concrete in the bags will set up, the paper sacks will eventually erode away, and you’ll have the easiest concrete wall you ever built.
Those are the basics. The details vary a bit depending upon the type of wall you need.
For a vertical wall, follow these steps:
- Start by laying out the location of the wall. Prepare footings by removing all grass, roots, leaves and loose soil from the surface. You want a firm base for the wall to rest on so it won’t settle and sag later in life.
- Next, place a row of bags on the prepared ground, butting them together tightly. It’s not a bad idea to stretch a string or lay a straight board on the ground as a guide, assuming you want a straight wall. If you want to curve the wall slightly, you can lay out a garden hose on the ground as a guide.
- After the first row is down, pierce the bags with a rake, pitchfork or even your golf shoes. Sprinkle them thoroughly with water to begin the hydration process. Then tamp them down firmly. Add another layer, staggering the bags as if you were laying bricks.
- Then repeat the pierce-soak-tamp process, and keep on stacking. Package Pavement Co., makers of Quikrete, recommend 60-pound bags for this job. This size is big enough to make the work go fast, yet small enough to handle easily. A three-bag stack will give you about 1 foot of height, and five bags placed end to end will yield about 7 linear feet of wall. Figure your needs accordingly.
- If you go more than a few layers high, it’s a good idea to reinforce the wall with 3/8-inch steel rebar. You can probably get this where you get your bags of mix. If not, you may have to try a concrete supply house.
- Cut the bar to length with a hacksaw, and drive the pieces down through your stack of bags and well into the ground. Aim the bars to avoid gaps between bags. This will tie all the bags together into a solid structure.
You can use this same technique to build a slanted wall for controlling erosion on a slope. As before, start by preparing a solid footing. Then start stacking your bags in stairstep rows up the slope. Fill with dirt behind each new row, and tamp the dirt down to assure a solid bank behind the wall.
After the wall is stacked, you can go back and pierce the bags, then sprinkle with water. If you don’t have access to water, the bags will hydrate on their own, drawing water from the soil and from any rains that come.
For the utmost in strength, you can drive short lengths of rebar down through each bag and into the slope. Doing this will help anchor the bags to the slope, and prevent the wall from being pushed outward by the pressure of the soil behind it.
The paper sacks will eventually weather away, leaving behind a wall that looks as if it were built of concrete boulders. If you don’t like the look of the finished wall, you can plant ivy at its base and, in a year or two, its humble origins will be thoroughly disguised.
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Tags: build concrete wall, concrete retaining wall, concrete wall