Concrete retaining walls can be a pleasingly aesthetic addition in any landscape; it’s a natural-looking design element that ties together two distinct elevations of the landscape. And that’s it’s main purpose: to separate two distinct elevations of soil. Now the retaining wall can be built from many different types of building materials; you could build a small retaining wall from brick and separate a raised garden bed from the rest of the landscape, or a much larger and prominent shotcrete-built retaining wall to prevent an eroded landscape from sloughing-off further. And that’s one of the amazing things that shotcrete can do: quickly and reliably alter a landscape to both protect it and make it more beautiful.
A retaining wall is important because erosion won’t resolve itself. Gravity will continue to move the earth downhill. But a retaining wall also provides more usable land; sometimes in a landscape the eroded hillside can be pushed back far enough that it opens up more space.
One of the benefits of a building material such as shotcrete is that it is extremely adaptable. When you build a retaining wall with shotcrete, the material gets pneumatically applied to the surface; it’s such a sticky building material that unlike conventional concrete there are no forms required. Experienced shotcrete technicians can apply the shotcrete needed sometimes in a single pass. That’s impressive when you compare the capabilities of shotcrete to other conventional building strategies.
And the best part? Shotcrete not only is an efficient building material, but it’s also highly adaptable in appearance. You can design practically any finished surface onto a shotcrete retaining wall. The shotcrete can be left in a gun-finished state, be troweled to an appearance similar to a conventional concrete wall–which in certain cases does have an appeal, especially where simplicity is concerned—but it can also be sculpted or stained to be a design element within a landscape.
If you have any questions as to how Shotcrete Montana can fix your erosion problems with a shotcrete-built retaining wall, then call today.
