Retaining wall, fence, or some barrier?

Hello.

I live on the corner house near a On a busy street, and adjacent to a Revsere T block. ( see below, xxx is my house, and the only house in between the 2 cross street.)

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----- xxx -----

My main entrance is facing the 2 cross street, and my front yard is splitted in half because my door is in the middle. so the front lawn is about 40ft x 20 and 60ft x 20 ft, splitter by a walk way. Have no fencing in the front yard, so the large piece is just grass.

Every week, I have garages on my lawn , from takeout boxes to plastic bags, to cigarette butts, to newspaper flying around. It's because the wind blows the garbages on the street on to my lawn, from the Main Street, or down from the 2 cross street adjacent to my house. I spend a great deal of time and money redoing the lawn myself, after I bought this house 1 year ago.

The worse of all, in the fall, all the leaves are blown onto my lawn, behind the small bushes I have, and on the lawn itself. During hurricane sandy, I cleaned up the lawn with 12 bags of leaves, as it was around 3 inches thick all over y lawn.

Now I understand why the lawn is so ugly when the prev owner had it, it's because if the time and effort required to keep it up so it doesn't get trashed.

This spring, I called a few company to give me a quote on building a brick wall with post hats about 4 feet high. Quotes I got was 12000 (labor and material) and 1 week of job, 3 man per day.

That is too expensive. So I started looking into cheaper solutions, to keep garbage and leaves out. I saw those stackable stone wall or retaining wall, but it looks like they are all built behind lawn that's also as high as the wall height. That's not what I am looking for.

I am simply looking for some sort of nice looking wall that's about 1.5 to 2 feet high, and I want to do it myself. Without lifting the lawn surface to the same height. My house is 1 story tall, so the front "fence" or "wall" cannot be too high, otherwise, it will look weird.

I cannot install picket fence or semi privacy, because hey have gaps in between, and garbages can still come in.

Can you give me ideas or suggestions how I can do it? Remember, Is not a retaining wall with sol to support behind it, it's just a straight standing wall.

Thanks.

 

You don't HAVE to backfill against the "hill holder" blocks. If all you want to come up is two feet or less that shouldn't be a serious problem UNLESS you have miscreants that will attempt to push your wall over or a car hits the wall.

You WILL have to have a solid wall, that is, you cannot just stack the blocks and expect them to stay put. You would need to anchor the first course and then either use the adhesive made for the blocks to glue all additional blocks or else use mortar to build up the wall just as a mason would do with bricks. The adhesive is really easy but not as strong as mortar. Either way it can be a DIY job.

 

Hi,

Do I need to dig and get a footing? I am in NYC, the frost line is said to be at 4'.

I am also evaluating his option,

Build 4 brick post and get picket fence to go in between.

To get a 4 feet high brick post, how many inches for footing?
Thanks

 

For a solid wall, you typically need a footer. For a segmental wall, you don't want a footer, a course or two get buried depending on the height of the wall - for something 2' or less, I would think one course might even only need to be partially buried. With the segmental walls, some of them work by having a lip which causes them to have a slight pitch backward but some connect with pins and I think they can go straight up, which is what it sounds like would work best for you.