With the potential for flooding along the Vaal River and Vaal Dam areas ever present, waterfront properties are constantly at risk of being washed away or damaged. Yet one property which installed a retaining wall constructed from Technicrete’s Earthform garden blocks in 2009, is still standing intact, despite the massive floods of 2010 and 2011.

Jannie Odendaal bought farm land and built his new house with a water frontage on the Vaal River between Christiana and Bloemhof on the North West Province’s N12 Treasure Route. Realising that the Vaal Dam was a main water catchment area and that the upstream Dam held up to 2,600 million cubic meters of water, he wisely sought a product to construct a solid retaining wall, and chose Technicrete’s Earthform.

Odendaal said “I am not an engineer and have no technical knowledge on retaining walls and how to erect them. I selected Earthform, simply because the accompanying pamphlet gave me very easy-to-understand instructions on how to install the garden blocks. Four of us erected a retaining wall, three meters from the level of the water to a height of over six meters and in a circular design, which we believed would help ease water pressure in the event of a flood”.

“We knew that we needed some form of drainage, and left 15mm spacing open for that. The sand was compacted tightly on the embankment and approximately 2,000 Earthform garden bricks later we had this enormous retaining wall in place. One year later we had the first major flooding, and again in 2011 an even greater flooding disaster occurred when they had to open the sluice gates and release 3,400 cubic litres per      second of water. Neighbours’ properties were washed away, embankments and other brick retaining walls collapsed – but we were left standing, completely intact. What a testament to the Technicrete product that it survived the enormous damage from two of the worst floods seen in this region!”

Technicrete’s Earthform garden blocks while aimed at the DIY market, can also be used by landscaping contractors and property developers and offer an attractive solution to the creation of garden features and steep wall structures. Earthform is a low maintenance product and vegetation and plants can be easily installed inside the block. They can be stacked up to eight layers high on stable ground. The blocks weigh just 23kg and are 320mm x 290 mm x 180 mm in size, and come in autumn, grey and plum colourings. An installation guide is available.