Weep Holes in Retaining Wall

[anthony_d]

Hello,

I've got a retaining wall behind my house that supports the ground that my house and garden sit on.

It's not in good appearance, with render cracking and falling off. The coping tiles on the top are breaking apart, and most of the wall is generally rather damp in appearance.

The length of wall is about 20 meters and 5 foot tall. The house is 1.5metres from the wall at the closest point.

Strange thing about the wall is that there are only two weep holes either side of the closest point to the house. Interestingly that's the place where the wall appears to be driest.

It's been on my todo list to do something about this wall for as long as I've lived here (10 years), and the house and presumably the wall is about 26 years old.

The wall is plumb and has demonstrated no signs of leaning or other strain, but there is one large crack that appears to be due to water ingress from a gap between two coping tiles.

So my question, should more weep holes be added, and if so is it a simple matter of drilling with a core drill, or are things a lot more involved than that (like demolish and rebuild kind of involved)?

Not sure on the type of soil, but it drains easily.

[Someone-Else]

In theory if you drill a hole through the wall you will let the water out / stop it building up, how ever in practice what you have done is given the water more ways to get into the wall, since it now can not only seep in through the front in can move a long and seep in where ever it wants to, since it now has a tunnel.

I would however suggest you drill a hole through of X+1mm diameter and push a pipe through the hole, creating a liner so water can run through, but not go any where else. The pipe would be a diameter of X since the hole is X+1mm.