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

Hello, we have retained our terrace plot with a dry stone wall. This is not difficult if you are a bit skilled at puzzling.
Greetings

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

Has its advantages - but also a few disadvantages.
Advantage - You can hide some stuff there that doesn’t necessarily have to be out in the open. Trash bins, bike racks (possibly even covered), etc.
Disadvantage 1 - You have to be careful that your trench doesn’t turn into a “dirty corner.” The motto being - out of sight, out of mind. “We’ll just put it there for now - nobody will see it.”
Disadvantage 2 - Even if you have windows there, it might still be somewhat dark in the rooms.

- Yes, we asked ourselves that too. :-/ Of course, it was a topic during planning a year ago, and he drew a sloped embankment, but I think he didn’t consider that the plot according to the plan is still longer, but the slope ends earlier and turns into a steep slope. So he calculated the angle incorrectly and probably thought the final height of our plot only comes after a few meters. (And we didn’t think about that either…)
We also called him over on Monday right away. He casually said he was already aware that we would have to slope here, possibly even steeper. For us, the plan according to the drawing always looked “relatively” flat and we had pictured it differently.

“Plum”
Of course, as a builder you should critically examine the plan and better ask one time too many than too few. However, you are an amateur yourself and might not always be able to assess the site 100%. Therefore - in my opinion - the architect should have pointed this out more clearly.
He was aware of it - you apparently weren’t.

- The plan has already been approved and we are close to the start of construction. On Friday, the excavation for the foundation pit will take place. We don’t want to build the ground floor into the hillside now because at the back we have the lighting for the stairwell with large windows. These are also supposed to bring light down into the stairwell in the basement. If they were underground, that wouldn’t work anymore.
On Saturday, while staking out, we actually briefly considered scrapping everything and re-planning, but since not only time but also money, downtime for the shell builder, contracts, etc. are involved, we left it and just have to make do.

If everything is so last minute, it is of course difficult to scrap things. Furthermore – as you wrote in the other post – you already have the basement in the ground; it would have been rather unfortunate if the ground floor had to be earthbound as well.
Still, the architect should have looked for alternatives with you here. I have also noticed in our area that architects like to reach into the drawer (“I always did it this way, so I’ll do it again”) and pull out a suboptimal suggestion. In our street, aside from us, there is only one other homeowner who uses the area above the slope. All others (some also built with architects) have excavated the slope at the back and then built a wall to support the excavated terrain again. And – as already mentioned – everyone looks at a wall when sitting on their terrace.

I hope for you that you won’t be annoyed by this rather unwanted area in the future. You invest a lot of time, effort, and money into your “dream of a lifetime.”

Hello, we retained our terrace plot with a dry stone wall. This is not difficult if you are a bit skillful at puzzling. Regards

Looks good. Does this wall withstand earth pressure in the long term? Probably depends on the soil conditions?

It has definitely lasted for 2 years

Disadvantage 1 - You have to be careful that your trench doesn’t turn into a "dirt corner." The motto is - out of sight, out of mind. "We’ll just put it there for now - no one can see it there." Disadvantage 2 - Even if you have windows there, it can happen that the rooms are always a bit gloomy.

The "good" thing about it is that at the back we only have the stairwell windows and the toilet window, and since it’s the north side, the lighting is fortunately not too bad. Otherwise, we would really have had to think much harder about whether we shouldn’t redesign after all.

Therefore, in my opinion, the architect should have pointed this out a bit more clearly. He was aware of it - but you apparently weren’t.

Yes, we see it that way too, but unfortunately the horse has already bolted! I can only give all home builders with sloping plots the advice to have the contour lines drawn very precisely and check them again and again! If we had known that we wouldn’t get a "level" garden up to the house wall at the back at all, we probably would have planned differently. We had imagined having a "play meadow" behind the house for playing football and badminton for the kids, and at the front the slope with nice flower beds and natural stone steps, etc.

I hope for you that you won’t be annoyed by this rather unwanted area in the future. You put a lot of time, effort, and money into your "dream home."

Thanks! I hope so too. I also have to say it’s not so bad for me at the back anymore. What I find almost more annoying is that now we’re looking at a slope towards the neighbor and there will probably be steps or something there. His land on the right side of our house is naturally much higher (about 1.40 m higher) and our terrace door from the kitchen is then 1.40 m lower at the front corner of the house. That really looks very nice. Did you do any special stabilization behind the wall beforehand? And did you actually do it yourselves? Do you have to "glue" it with mortar or how does that work? But that must take several days... (For us it would be at least 11 meters or more)

Hello and thank you.
We have a foundation under the wall, where a mat was connected and behind it about 80cm filled with concrete. See attachment. Yes, we did everything ourselves except for the foundation, which was done with the excavation. The stones are laid without mortar, so dry, and progressively backfilled.
Yes, it took several days and yes, the stones are very heavy. For us, it is 15m each on two levels, so 30m, about 1.50m high.
Regards