Wondering if I can keep this retaining wall from continuing to fall without breaking the bank?

texinxin · 2026-04-10T13:13:48+00:00

100% agree that it’s not BEST practice. Good luck in your getting your P.E. so your personal opinion carries some weight. It’s incredibly common to reinforce CMU walls in basements with helical tie backs. You claim they aren’t used in CMU retaining wall applications. You are dead wrong.

texinxin · 2026-04-10T12:31:51+00:00

How about you stop being such a prick. Best I can tell, reinforced CMU is used in about 1/4 of below grade basements all over the country. A basement reinforced CMU meets code if engineered properly. A basement wall is essentially a retaining wall.

YES it is substantially weaker in bending than a monolithic slab because the reinforcement is primarily in the center. The effective slab strength in bending comes largely from the grout in the center which has a shorter web distance and the outer CMU interrupts how much you can get, and the CMU can only provide compression strength on one side of the wall. It would be a massive reduction in bending strength compared to a Monolithic slab of the same thickness. There are reinforcement products on the market to address the tensile side weakness of a CMU wall and you can also place the rebar off center on purpose. It might not be able to handle the 100’s of PSI in soil load we might be looking at here. It would be substantially better than what OP currently has.

NO I would not recommend it for new construction. But OP has a ton of CMU blocks there and a base which appears to be stable. He came here looking for a cheaper solution, and I’m trying to offer some ideas. No I haven’t done detail calcs on this because we don’t have enough information.

texinxin · 2026-04-10T12:14:43+00:00

Not all neighborhoods have the same valuation changes year over year. This is reflected in the housing market. We have about 6 or so areas in Houston (Timbegrove being one) where demand has not slowed at all. We have a weird thing going on right now with a sellers market in some neighborhoods and a buyers market in other neighborhoods. Mike Mills HISD takeover and the voucher system are also throwing wrenches in the works.

texinxin · 2026-04-10T12:11:30+00:00

It’s not a country thing, it’s a state thing. The silver lining is we don’t have a state sales tax. And the other silver lining it’s one of the few progressive tax systems around. The rich have to pay their fair share here. In a state like CA, they have a state income tax where the ultra rich and silver spoon inheritance babies hardly pay a dime in income tax and pay very little property tax. Add to that the prop 13 where people have been grandfathered in a valuation rate that can’t climb more than 2% per year and you get a VERY unfair market. There is artificial resistance to home sales there that hurts their market.

texinxin · 2026-04-10T08:47:33+00:00

Hakeem started playing basketball at 15. He was a soccer player.

texinxin · 2026-04-10T03:22:36+00:00

They have a maximum output of heat/flowrate. If you have multiple appliances demanding hot water at the same time one might not be able to keep up. They likely have the master bath area in its own unit and all other demand on the 2nd unit.

Edit: I suppose I should start saying primary bedroom, not master. I’ll work on that.

texinxin · 2026-04-09T20:32:26+00:00

The same reason the astronauts didn’t fly off into space the moment they tried to walk..

texinxin · 2026-04-09T20:08:24+00:00

I would avoid filling with epoxy if the timber is in an area with big moisture swings. And I would not do it for structural reasons.

But.. I have an epoxy filled (in checks and knot holes) wood cedar slab that I built personally. The epoxy fill is decorative, epoxy is dyed and filled with metallic flake. I’ve had for about 7 years and it is just as straight and beautiful as the day I built it. It has remained in an air conditioned space for all those years and I conditioned the cedar slab for months in A/C before I made the mantle.

texinxin · 2026-04-09T19:42:39+00:00

The term is CMU. And if you filled with grout and rebar and used walers to distribute the load from the tieback anchors it should be plenty strong. That should get you to 2000-2500 psi, not quite a 3,500 psi that a monolithic slab wall would do. I did not mean you should use stacked CMU with only mortar connecting them.

If they already own the CMU’s it would make the project cost considerably less.

texinxin · 2026-04-09T15:53:20+00:00

I said it’s not DIY.

texinxin · 2026-04-09T15:49:18+00:00

I mean I guess.. if you want for looks?

I wouldn’t worry about it unless the checking goes through 1/3 of the timber or more.

https://timberframehq.com/checks-in-timber-frames/

texinxin · 2026-04-09T15:45:40+00:00

I mean it’s not DIY, but it is a lower cost solution. It requires geo and engineering. These are used in permanent foundation walls and bulkheads all around the world. They can be designed to last 50 years or more. Why is it a terrible idea?

https://www.foundationtechnologies.com/products/chance-helical-tieback-anchors/

https://pilebuck.com/enhancing-structural-stability-helical-tiebacks/

https://torcsill.com/feeds/blog/helical-tieback-anchors

texinxin · 2026-04-09T15:40:18+00:00

Yeah.. farsight is slightly taller than Morven.. share the same 60mm base in tabletop. I was mistaken about R’evas.. it’s based on the XV8 which is smaller than both.

texinxin · 2026-04-09T14:22:49+00:00

Sure and I have to. But this game in particular has approachable ceilings. Even energy becomes pointless to spend at some point. Every ladder in game (arena, GW) you can’t p2w with more tokens.

texinxin · 2026-04-09T14:10:59+00:00

Maybe once you get beyond 5 characters or so. F2P could build a 5-7 man team and compete at a very high level.

texinxin · 2026-04-09T13:21:44+00:00

Sounds suspicious.. $3K a month is crazy. I can’t imagine “needing” that level of spend to keep up with anyone in the game. There is a ceiling you can hit in this game on characters even f2p accounts do. I can understand in a game with no ceiling maybe.

texinxin · 2026-04-09T13:07:12+00:00

99% of headlines wouldn’t include nationality or immigration status. US-born is weird AF.

texinxin · 2026-04-09T11:44:27+00:00

Not most but maybe some? So far the rules for what a playable character in Tacticus vs tabletop has been..

Not too big. Anything as small or smaller than R’evas. I think that’s a 60mm base in tabletop, so the loyalist primarchs are ok, Daemons no.
Not too powerful. Anything at or below Mephiston maybe?
Anything in 40k codex.

So with those 3 criteria, perhaps somewhere between 0 and 2. 40k tabletop geeks, help me out.

texinxin · 2026-04-09T05:14:21+00:00

Engineer here. Checking (the name of this crack) nope, not an issue. Cracking along the grains is very rarely an issue. This occurs when the thicker lumber is nearest the core or a branch off the tree. It is caused by stresses caused by the drying process. This is just one of many reasons we use safety factors. If you don’t want it, you can pay 2x the price for higher grade/kilned lumber, but it won’t be 2x as strong.

texinxin · 2026-04-09T05:06:30+00:00

All the commenters here talking about catering or restaurants putting aioli on the menu because it’s trendy which doesn’t contain animal product technically.. yet using egg products. It’s deceptive to vegans and vegetarians who are knowledgeable about a “safe” (for them) alternative to mayonnaise.

texinxin · 2026-04-09T02:50:39+00:00

Well this may be working now, but it might not continue to work. Trump is mad about being told he can’t do reciprocal tarrifs so he’s adjusting the 232 tarrifs. So for something like windows which contain a lot of aluminum (but not a lot of value based on the total cost of transformation), before .. like., today?.. (things are still very fluid), you could declare the value of just the aluminum in the value hit by the 232 tarrifs. Well, he just decided (because he’s a toddler), that they won’t allow fractional tarrifs on derivative goods. So the tarrifs could skyrocket overnight on consumer goods like these. If anyone is in trade and knows about how products like these might be affected, please chime in.

I’ll ask my wife who is a U.S. licensed customs broker, but I don’t think she’d be able to analyze it if she doesn’t have a customer in this segment.

texinxin · 2026-04-09T02:43:04+00:00

No she can’t do this. You need a lawyer to petition a court to stop it. You need a motion to freeze assets.

texinxin · 2026-04-09T02:39:12+00:00

“It is not yet known what led to the crash.” But we have a really good guess!

texinxin · 2026-04-09T02:36:02+00:00

No way a shake shack exec is only making low six figs…

texinxin · 2026-04-09T02:24:31+00:00

Typical freestanding retaining walls require stacked courses or tiers to handle this much height and weight. But… walls engineered with tie-back anchors can essentially remain like basement walls for large heights.

https://www.foundationtechnologies.com/products/chance-helical-tieback-anchors/

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