Engineering

Before I can rent more heavy equipment and get on with this wall, I need to know exactly what kind of wall I'm building. The City says any wall over 2' in height must have a building permit, and they have only two pre-approved designs for walls between 2' and 5' 8". One of those is a cantilevered CMU design that for my 4' 8" wall would be 4' 6" wide at the foundation. That's a freakin' sidewalk, it would stick 2' into the usable yard space and require massive amounts of excavation and backfill.

The other is a wooden wall that uses piers sunk 4' into the ground, which I like a lot better because being only 18" wide it saves space and materials. But the wood will only last 10 - 15 years around here and can't be covered with a nice stone finish, so I'm not building one of those.

I went back to the City building permit troupe* today to plead my case for a hybrid wall that use 18" rebar & concrete piers sunk 5' into the ground, tied to the wall with top to bottom rebar. Robert, the building permits guy, looked at my drawing and agreed it's great idea! Narrower, more efficient with materials than the cantilever, easy to build.

"So can you approve this design?"
"No."
"You had me going there."
I wasn't really surprised, it was a fool's hope anyway.

The City must have a professional structural, civil, or soils engineer's signature on the design before they'll approve it. "That way when the mud flows into your neighbor's yard, we've all got someone to point the finger at." Ah, liability avoidance, the second great purpose of planning departments (after revenue generation).

I called around to a dozen or so local structural and civil engineering guys / firms. Three answered their phone, and one actually agreed to take the job for about $800. I was expecting to pay $2000 for this engineering, so that's a bright spot in this diversion.

(* They have hired a new code enforcement guy, about 55 years old, who thinks he's the comic relief for the planning department. The place felt like a continuous amateur improv show today.)