Oak sleepers for retaining wall and patio to sit on
knixon8
Posts: 5
Also shown in “problem solving"….
Hi all, I hope someone can give me some advice?
we’ve moved into a house where the garden is about 320mm higher than next doors garden.
we want to create a patio area, but need to create the retaining wall first to lay the patio over the top.
We were going to use sleepers, but at the moment trying to get old railway sleepers that are creosote are like gold dust…
if we use new hardwood sleepers, should we use a barrier and gravel to keep the moisture away from the sleeper when we back fill, and will they last
30 years or more? Or do we wait to get old sleepers ?
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I'm not sure you can still get old creosote sleepers any more, it's a banned substance. Anyway, you might not want them as the creosote tends to ooze out in very hot weather.
New ones will be fine and are much lighter to lift as well which is good. They should all be pressure treated so should last a decent amount of time - most people these days do not stay in a house for 30 years so it shouldn't be a problem. It is better to use a waterproof barrier between the sleeper and the soil but gravel's not usually necessary.
Good luck with the build.
you can still get the creosoted ones, but everyone is taking them at the moment. These won’t be seen, as once in position with the patio on top, the boundary fence will hide the sleepers, so it was just a case of making sure they last 30 year… I’ve no intention of moving, and trying to future proof the garden for when they get the house…
We used old creosoted sleepers from Jarabosky/Railwaysleepers.net to retain the top of our garden and built a 35m2 patio on top of it, with more sleepers to build a retaining wall to a 1m height to keep back the garden at the end of our garden. To be doubly certain that the sleepers will last 'forever', we built a French drain behind it with concrete rubble. For the same of the £30 it cost, it'll help and it gave us somewhere to dump over 2 tonnes of concrete rubble.
Be cautious which new hardwood you choose if going that way. The North American oaks are nowhere near as slow-growing as other hardwoods so not nearly as strong. The trade off is they are lighter to handle - ours we're 95kg per 2m length!
No matter how aged they are, I have found there are times in hot weather when the creosote will mark clothing, and it’s virtually impossible to get it out of most fabric.
Gardening in Central Norfolk on improved gritty moraine over chalk ... free-draining.