Re: Cantilevered Retaining Wall - Rule of Thumb

(1) The footing is the same size at the hight of the wall.
(2) If your soil is hard, 80% of the footing goes on the heel side, the bottom of the footing is at frost depth
(3) If your soil is soft, 80% of the footing goes on the toe side, the bottom of the footing gets a hefty key

It other words, it all depends on the soil (presuming you care about such things as bearing capacity under the toe, which not all engineers do).

You can always tell them that the footing needs to be equal toe-to-heel, and then simply design it that way. Sure, it won't be optimal, but it will be "fair".  Engineering isn't always about minimum materials used. :-)

Jordan

Michel wrote:

Greetings all-

 

Does anyone have a rule of thumb for proportioning propertyline cantilevedered retaining walls? My clients share a property line - one on the down slope who would like to minimize the size of the toe and the other up slope who would like to minimize the heel / size of the excavation. What to do??

 

-Michel