Retaining wall materials from a yard inside Brisbane
HYBUILT is a retaining wall materials supplier with its yard at 28 Shettleston Street, Rocklea QLD 4106. Rocklea is an industrial suburb about 11 km south south west of the Brisbane CBD, at the Brisbane end of the Ipswich Motorway and next door to the Brisbane Markets. If you are building a wall anywhere in Brisbane, the material is already in your city rather than being freighted into it.
We carry the whole wall in one place: concrete, composite, timber and sandstone sleepers, galvanised steel posts in both the standard range and the heavy duty 150 series, post caps, fence brackets, wedges, drainage gravel, agi pipe, geo fabric and bagged cement. You can order online, or send us the wall and we will do the take off for you.
Delivery from Rocklea to Brisbane
Brisbane is the shortest run we do, because the load never leaves the city. Two things follow from that which do not apply anywhere else we deliver.
Bulk drainage gravel is delivery only
Our 10mm and 20mm drainage gravel is delivery only and there is no pickup option for it. Tell us the volume you need and the suburb it is going to, and our team will confirm the freight cost with the rest of your order before you are asked to pay anything.
Collection from the yard is realistic here
For products other than gravel, Brisbane customers can collect from Rocklea. Contact us first rather than turning up unannounced, so the order is picked and waiting when you arrive.
Everything else works the way it does across our network. Depending on the order size we can usually deliver within 2 to 3 business days after order confirmation, we run crane trucks in a range of sizes matched to the load and the site access, and the final delivery cost is confirmed before dispatch rather than after you have paid. The delivery and installation page has the full site access checklist, which is worth reading before you book a truck: driveway width, gates and kerbs, overhead powerlines, soft or wet ground, where the load actually goes, and crane reach.
What is worth knowing about building in Brisbane
Brisbane covers a very large area and there is no single Brisbane soil profile, so have your own site assessed rather than trusting a suburb generalisation. Two points we can stand behind are worth making.
Low lying Brisbane land gets wet and stays wet
Brisbane has a lot of low lying land along the Brisbane River and its creeks. Our own yard suburb is a good example: low lying parts of Rocklea are flood prone, it was Brisbane's worst affected suburb in the 2010 to 2011 Queensland floods, and it was severely damaged in the 1974 flood. Saturated ground behind a wall is what pushes walls over, which is why drainage is a structural decision and not the optional last step of a build. Our retaining wall drainage guide covers what to buy and how much of it.
Brisbane walls are often boundary walls
On established Brisbane blocks a retaining wall frequently ends up on or near a boundary, and that raises two separate questions. The first is the approval question below, because the common exemption depends on the wall being at least 1.5 metres clear of a building or another retaining wall. The second is who pays. In Queensland a retaining wall is not a fence: section 11(2) of the Neighbourhood Disputes (Dividing Fences and Trees) Act 2011 expressly excludes retaining walls, so there is no automatic half share. We cover that in who is responsible for a retaining wall between properties. It is a legal question rather than a materials question, so get your own advice.
Council approval for a retaining wall in Brisbane
Brisbane City Council states that building approval is not required only where all of the following are true:
- there is no surcharge loading over the zone of influence for the wall
- the total height of the wall and of the fill or cut retained by the wall is no more than one metre above the wall's natural ground surface
- the wall is no closer than 1.5 metres to a building or another retaining wall
- it does not form part of the fencing for a pool
If your wall does not meet all four, Brisbane City Council directs owners to a licensed building certifier with scaled and detailed plans prepared by a draftsperson or architect, and notes that the work must still comply with the National Construction Code.
Greater Brisbane spills into neighbouring councils, and their published positions are close but not identical. Logan City Council treats a retaining wall up to 1 metre high from natural ground level as accepted development provided no loads are imposed above it, such as a building, structure or driveway, and requires approval where the wall is built closer than 1.5 metres to any other building or other retaining wall regardless of the height of the retaining walls. City of Moreton Bay uses the same one metre, no surcharge and 1.5 metre clearance test, adds that council consent is separately required for work in council easements or over or adjacent to council stormwater mains, and usefully clarifies that surcharge loading includes items such as concrete driveways but excludes pedestrian and vehicle movement and rainfall effects.
Height is not the only trigger, and thresholds and council pages change. Nothing here is a substitute for confirming your own situation with your council or a licensed private building certifier before you order material. Our Queensland council approval guide sets out the triggers beyond height and the differences between councils in full.
What Brisbane customers usually buy
Most Brisbane residential walls we supply are sleepers on galvanised steel posts, with drainage behind them.
- Concrete sleepers in smooth grey, smooth charcoal, block face, timber look and slate stone finishes, in 1480mm, 1980mm and 2380mm lengths.
- Galvanised steel posts, C and H sections in twelve lengths from 0.4m to 3.8m, plus 90 and 45 degree corner posts. Our steel post selection guide works out which one and what length.
- Composite sleepers and timber sleepers for lower garden walls, and sandstone where the wall is a feature.
- Drainage, geo fabric and drainage and base materials.
- Seconds and clearance for hidden courses and back of block work.
- Sleeper grab hire, which is worth asking about on a Brisbane job because the machine and the material can come off the same order.
One of the walls on our projects page is a Brisbane job, at Wynnum, where the owners replaced and extended an existing wall.
Work out what your Brisbane wall needs
Put the wall length and height into the materials calculator and it returns a bill of materials: sleeper count, post count and length, drainage gravel volume, agi pipe, geo fabric, wedges and caps. It is an estimate rather than a quote. When you want it priced with freight to your suburb, request a quote and send the length, the height, your suburb and a couple of phone photos of the site.
Not sure how high you are building or what that changes? Start with the wall height guide.
The Rocklea yard
- Address: 28 Shettleston Street, Rocklea QLD 4106
- Phone: (07) 3716 0191
- Email: enquiry@hybuilt.com.au
- Hours: Monday to Friday, 6am to 4:30pm
Other areas we deliver to
We also deliver to the Gold Coast, Ipswich, the Sunshine Coast, Toowoomba and Northern New South Wales. If your address is outside the list, ask anyway and we will price the freight properly.