Planting and lawn
Beds, mulch, turf, irrigation. Last, once the ground under it drains.
Topsoil0 to 300mm
Level ground on a block that never had any.
A bench cut into the clay, drained, walled, and then planted. That is the order every job on a Ballarat slope has to go in.
Ring from the block, if you can see the slope.
- Ten years in Ballarat
- Crew of four
- One job at a time
From the topsoil down to the rock
Four things, in the order the ground meets them.
Paving and driveways
Bluestone, exposed aggregate or pavers on a compacted base, laid to a fall that takes water off the house.
Base150 to 400mm
Retaining walls
Sleeper, block and rock, from garden edges to engineered walls with a permit and an outlet on every one.
Heavy clay600mm to 1.8m
Drainage
Ag line, sumps, pits. The wet corner, and the lawn nobody mows until December.
Rockfrom about 1.2m
The wall is the easy part. What sits behind it isn’t.
A bowed wall on this side of Ballarat is a drainage story. Water sat behind the blocks and the clay under them moved in July.
What comes out of that hole sets the footing, the backfill and the outlet. Guessing at those three is how a wall ends up bowing.
The block, from first cut to last load
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Day one
You ring, or send a photo of the slope and what it does when it rains.
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That week
Tom comes out, takes levels and photos, and digs a test hole.
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Inside a week of the visit
A fixed quote in writing, itemised, with the drainage priced as part of the wall.
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The date on the quote
We start on a day you have in writing, and stay on your block until it is finished.
The visit, the levels and the test hole are part of quoting the job, not an extra on the invoice at the end.
Ten years in the same clay
The ground here is heavy clay under a thin skin of topsoil, and the blocks sit on a slope. Ten years of digging it sets the order of every job: the wall goes up last.
Four of us. Tom Brennan learned drainage on commercial civil sites, where an engineer signs it off. One job at a time, which is why a quote can carry a start date six weeks out.
Mount Pleasant. Wall, clay at 400mm.
They worked out why the old wall was bowing before they quoted. Two winters, and the new one has not moved.
Brown Hill. Drainage, rock at 900mm.
The price held when they hit rock two days in. Tom told us on the day, not at the end.
Start with a look at the block.
Send a photo of the slope, and say where the water goes after a downpour. That is enough to put a rough number on it.