I finally found the right way to lay soldier courses on curved walls

Last week in Nashville I had a curved retaining wall job that was kicking my butt. Every time I tried to lay a soldier course along that radius, the joints kept opening up on the outside edge and closing on the inside, looked terrible. My foreman just said "quit fighting it and rack it like a brick arch" so I tried setting each brick individually with a spacing gauge on the outside face only. That trick works because the inside joint naturally tightens as you pivot, you just have to accept it and not force equal gaps everywhere. It took me about 2 hours to unlearn my straight-wall habit and now the whole line looks clean and the client actually complimented the curve. Has anyone else dealt with this on segmented retaining walls, or do you guys do something different for the inside joints?

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laura18916d ago

Took me a job in Austin last spring to learn that same trick, spacing off the outside face was the only thing that saved my crew. Once I stopped obsessing over the inside gaps the whole curve just fell into place.