Dive Brief:
- Soil nails are thin rods that can be driven into slopes and attached to a retaining device on the slope surface to bolster stability.
- There are various surface treatments, including shotcrete and flexible mesh.
- Constraints include fine-grained soils, mixed-in boulders and climates with extensive freezing and thawing.
Dive Insight:
Soil; nails can't stabilize every slope to make the area buildable, and even those where the nails will work have to have some inherent stability to begin with. The result is not aesthetically pleasing, but it can be covered, as Stewart POerry did with English ivy on one project.
