Hang securing > overcoming 1.30 m / house in a "ditch"

Hello everyone,

after our house has now been staked out and a "string scaffold" has been set up, we noticed that our beautiful architectural drawing unfortunately does not really fit and that at the back with the ground floor we are about 1.30 m lower than our terrain level from the slope.

Therefore, we need a "trench" behind the house and then a retaining wall/parapet so that we have as flat a garden as possible at the top.
Our shell construction company suggested L-shaped stones or gabions and a drainage underneath. We are currently leaning towards gabions, they just look a bit nicer than the concrete L-shaped stones.
I quickly drew it. Green is the house wall, brown the trench, retaining wall, and the terrain.


What other solutions are there that are not extremely expensive?

And can there be other problems with this "trench constellation"? Moisture, hillside water etc.?

Best regards

So we need a "ditch" behind the house and then a retaining wall/parapet so that we have as level a garden as possible at the top. Our shell builder suggested L-shaped stones or gabions and a drainage system underneath. We are currently leaning towards gabions, they just look a bit nicer than the concrete L-shaped stones.
What other solutions are there that are not extremely expensive?

I don’t really find L-shaped stones very nice either; gabions are seen everywhere nowadays. Have you ever thought about planting stones or planters (installation)? They come in various designs and can, in my opinion, integrate very nicely into the garden design; this might take some of the edge off your frustration

And can there be other problems with this "ditch constellation"? Moisture, seepage water, etc.?

I think the soil expert will certainly give a recommendation on that. Water should of course not be able to run towards the house.

Rhenish greetings

Thank you for your quick reply! Yes, on Saturday we were already pretty upset because it completely messed up our entire garden planning, just as we had it in our heads for almost a year.

Hmm, until now I only know/knew these round planting stones and honestly, I don't like them that much. (Although your photo is definitely nicer than what I had in mind). Also, we would have to place them manually up there. The gabions would be lifted directly behind the house by the crane and would then be "finished". A natural stone wall would of course be the nicest, but then we probably wouldn’t be done walling in three years *laugh*

The water issue is managed by the drainage(s). But there will still be a "wall" about 1m or 1.5m behind the house wall and then soil...

We solved our slope problem with L-shaped retaining walls. We wanted to be on the safe side regarding stability. The L-shaped wall has a "foot" that is embedded in the ground. This means that the stability is ensured not only by the weight of the wall itself but also by the soil. For embellishment, boxes with trailing plants will be placed on top and bushes in front. Three points I still have: - How large would the distance be between the house wall and the retaining wall? - What kind of architect do you have who doesn't take such a slope into account? Shouldn't they have looked at the plot and its measurements? With our general contractor (including architect), the slope was already a topic in the very first meeting. - Have you ever thought about building the house with one side into the slope? That's what we did. Our rooms are arranged “the other way around” – meaning the bedrooms are downstairs and the living areas plus kitchen are upstairs. We enter the garden through the terrace door (in the future, an additional outside staircase will be added to the L-shaped walls). On the side where the wall is in the ground, we placed the utility room, etc. Unlike our neighbors, when we sit on the terrace, we don’t always look at a wall but (once the garden is finished) at hopefully lush greenery. Our child also has a short distance to their friend (next door across our garden).

Ah ok. Our shell builder (who also does exterior work and paving) said that the L-stones and the gabions are roughly the same in terms of stability and securing. He also only wants to use pre-filled gabions because they were compacted with a vibrating plate.

- I can’t tell you the exact distance. I think he mentioned about 1.50 m. (but we can still decide that during construction)

- Yes, we also wondered about that. :-/ Of course, it was a topic during planning a year ago and he drew in a sloped embankment, but I think he didn’t consider that the plot is still longer according to the plan, but the slope ends earlier and transitions into a steep slope. So he miscalculated the angle and probably thought the final height of our plot was only a few meters further on. (And we didn’t think about it either...) We also brought him here right away on Monday. Then he casually said that he already knew we would have to cut back the slope here, possibly even steeper. To us, the plan according to the drawing always looked "relatively" flat and we had imagined it differently.

- The plan is already approved and we are close to starting construction. The excavation will begin on Friday. We don’t want to build the ground floor into the slope now because we have lighting for the stairwell with large windows at the back. They are also supposed to bring light into the stairwell in the basement. If those are buried underground, that would no longer work. We actually briefly considered on Saturday, while staking out, scrapping everything and planning again, but since not only time but also money, downtime for the shell builder, contracts, etc. are involved, we abandoned the idea and just have to make do.

Addendum: Our "basement," which is [Sutterain] at the front, is already built into the slope. At the back, it practically already serves as the second floor, namely the "ground floor." (You can take a look at the plans in my planning thread)