Sleepers in garden

pledgeX

I'm looking to tidy up my garden and one of the jobs is to sort out the end of the garden. Currently the turf slopes down towards the end of the garden, then there's basically a load of mud that slopes up to the rear fence.

My plan is to level the turf out, and make a twin-tiered border at the end of the garden. To help explain, here's a fine architect's drawing of the side on view of my plan, complete with sample foliage:




The plan is to use the sleepers as a sort of decorative edging to hold the mud in place. My concern is that although the sleepers weigh a ton, with a bit of rain and after a period of time the sleepers are going to move, so I think I need a way to hold the sleepers in place.

The garden is ~6 metres wide, so I will need a way to join them horizontally as well as vertically. I think when joining them vertically I could probably do with driving something through both sleepers and a foot or so into the mud below to anchor it further.

A few questions on this:
1. Is this a feasible/sensible idea?
2. Any hints on the best way to join the sleepers either vertically or horizontaly (if this is even needed)?
3. Any suggestion on where to get the sleepers from (preferrably as cheap as possible)?

Thanks for any help.

wallbash

Nice to see a drawing , picture is worth a thousand words!

Can I suggest a little addition , add a row of bricks/ pavers in front of lower sleepers , level with the grass , to create a mowing strip . Little extra work but will save time in the long run .

I would drill vertical holes in the sleepers and hammer metal reinforcing rods into the ground.

DaftyDuck

If you fix a length of wood at 90° to the sleepers, heading into the soil, that will greatly increase stability. You can even connect row 1 and 2 of sleepers that way, which will again make the whole structure stronger..

To fix sleepers to each other, you can use dowels (drill a hole in the bottom one, stick a dowel in, drill a hole in the top one, then carefully and slowly lower the top one onto the bottom one... and therein lies the problem. Sleepers are darn heavy to do this with. Drilling right through is possible, but needs a long drill bit and powerful drill.
You can get metal strip with teeth top and bottom. You put it on the bottom sleeper, and clonk (technical term) the second one down heavily. Teeth are driven into both. I'll try and find it in a Screwfix catalogue for a name, but someone else might know what it is called.

However you do it, ensure water can freely drain forward... else the water build-up will rapidly alter the layout of the sleepers.

fawd1

I'd also recommend against buying the reclaimed sleepers you can get. My friend did this and had no end of trouble as they'd been treated with tar (as I believe have all previously used railway sleepers) and whenever it got warm, tar residues would seep out of the wood. Unpleasant and stains like you wouldn't believe!

rum1

I did this in my garden 3 years ago with reclaimed sleepers and had no problem, what i did do was to drill a hole through the sleeper and hammered a length of rebar metal through the hole and into the ground under the sleeper by about a foot..As i say this has been in place for 3 years now and has not moved

betsie

I have raised beds that height in my garden. The sleepers were concreted into place with a brick edge to mow up to. I would also not recommend reclaimed sleepers. We had reclaimed ones we planned to reuse and cut up to make the raised border edging but 3 angle grinder blades later and only 2 sleepers cut we sold the reclaimed ones and bought new ones.

The raised border looks great and mine is much deeper than yours and has shown no sign of movement.

Soot2006

rum1 wrote: »

I did this in my garden 3 years ago with reclaimed sleepers and had no problem, what i did do was to drill a hole through the sleeper and hammered a length of rebar metal through the hole and into the ground under the sleeper by about a foot..As i say this has been in place for 3 years now and has not moved

I did exactly this, but with new sleepers.
Love the look!

keystone

betsie wrote: »

but 3 angle grinder blades later and only 2 sleepers cut we sold the reclaimed ones and bought new ones.

Next time I suggest you try a chainsaw.

Cheers

pledgeX

Thanks for the comments folks. I think drilling a hole and inserting metal reinforcing rods is the neatest and best solution.

Couple of negative comments towards reclaimed sleepers though. That's not great as these look a lot cheaper! And it's quite likely I will need to cut them so maybe I need to find someone with a chainsaw!

Thanks for the hints about laying bricks in front to aid in butting the lawn. Definitely wouldn't have thought of that.

And in response to daftyduck, how would you recommend allowing the water to flow? Maybe some dug out channels at the end? I can imagine this looking naff, and after some heavy rain the size of the channels would probably increase.

csh_2

DH put a teir on our lawn with new sleepers and rebar as described. Looks fab. He put the sleeper in on its side rather than flat tho so only used one (rather than the two in your drawing) then put in a wee step in with the sleeper flat.
He cut them with just a power circular saw

ETA: He bought the sleepers from the wood yard, think off the top of my head were about £40 ish for a 2 metre length.

DaftyDuck

.... "so maybe I need to find someone with a chainsaw!"

Since this is money SAVING experts... I saw a cheap chainsaw in Aldi/Lidl (not sure which) with 3 year guarantee.... I think they were around £50, so dirt cheap.

Drainage? Well, make sure there is some gravel/rubble under zones of the bottom sleeper. Doesn't need much, just a couple of pipe-widths per sleeper. It stops a weight of water/wet mud building up behind, allowing the dam to literally slide away down your garden.

As to used sleepers.. have you seen the ones you want? our local timber merchant has them, and they are really not tarry at all. Some are, some aren't.

(Edit: Just did online hunt for chainsaw, not found it, so may be a local deal... Kent down here.... anyone else seen them? 46cc green box, that's all I remember.)