An update to include vertical loads on retaining walls would be a great help. This happens quite often in my projects where a foundation wall has an unbalanced backfill height that needs to be accounted for. The gravity loads will affect my reinforcement and bearing pressures. Also, it would be great to be able to check the wall as a grade beam when the geotech calls out a certain distance required to span any soft pockets in the soil.
1 Like
Hi @Jacob_Donaldson, welcome to Blueprint! Great to see you posting here. We’ve actually had a few other requests for vertical load support on retaining walls, so I’ll be sure to add your name to the ticket in our to-do list.
The idea of designing the wall as a grade beam is really interesting - I haven’t come across it before, so I’d love to learn more! If you have any references or details on this approach, feel free to share.
We’re juggling a few competing priorities at the moment, so it may take some time before we can implement these, but we’ll definitely keep you in the loop with any updates.
Thank you 
Hi Lucas, thank you for such a quick response! Here’s a snip of a geotechnical report calling out that unsupported design span. Typically we account for that in the stem wall (rather than the footing as mentioned in the report, as the depth of the stem wall is very useful) by specifying 1-2 continuous pieces of reinforcement at the top & bottom of the wall. I’d be curious to see if the calcs can include the contribution of the footing for this purpose, where the longitudinal reinforcement shares the tensile load rather than being purely for shrinkage/temperature control.
Hi @Jacob_Donaldson thanks for your reply. Yes totally that makes sense! I’m unsure how to implement this feature in the module since this check is not a code requirement. I’d suggest you a workaround: check the footing using our Concrete Beam module. Please check out this short video.
I hope that helps, otherwise let me know!