Built a small retaining wall that is waiting to be backfilled this weekend and I'm looking for ideas on how best to provide a prevention to any deflection in the future. Live in Minnesota and have provided a well-compacted, Class V base that is about 4" thick that it rests on. The wall is about 10 ft wide at the base and tapers up to about 5 ft at the top from either end. The height is about 30" and I intend to bury the first couple of courses of brick in front.
On the back side I have about 6" of river pebbles at this time, and I'm going to sink one or two 3/4", 10 ft sections of flexible ENT, plastic conduit that I have drilled small holes into to act as a French Drain. I will then add another couple inches of river pebbles on top of that.
Before back filling with mostly sand, I intend to use two, 3' - 4' ground anchors that I will screw in somewhat horizontally into the ground behind the wall and secure these with turn-buckles to the eye bolts I've attached to the back side of the wall that you can see in the image below.
I've incorporated two PVC windows and a 3 gal bucket that will hold low voltage, solar landscape lights that will provide illumination from within.
One of the main questions I have is how much of the tapered sides to bury? I think the more I cover of the taper, the more secure I can lock-in the wall but I don't want to lose too much of the wall face in doing so.
Anything else I can do to give this thing a fighting chance to survive?
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