Quick Woven Gabion Installation Guide

• Prepare the Woven Gabion: Take out the neatly folded woven gabion and lay it flat on the ground. Have binding wire and tools ready by your side.

• Unfold the Gabion Box: Unfold the four sides and cover plates of the gabion mesh separately to distinguish the various panels and edges of the gabion that need to be tied together.

• Installation with Cooperation: Work together with 2-3 people to use the provided binding wire to tie the partitions and the perimeter of the woven gabion.

• Stone Filling: Fill the well-assembled gabionbasket with stones.

• Install Cover Plates: After filling with stones, install the cover plates on top of the gabion.

What is Woven Gabion?

Woven gabion basket is made of corrosion-resistant, high-strength galvanized wire or PVC-coated galvanized wire. The woven mesh opening is hexagonal, so it’s also called hexagonal gabion mesh.  Compared to welded gabion box, the woven gabion basket has a certain flexibility in structure, adapting to changes in terrain and enhancing protective effectiveness. Moreover, the installation and construction of woven gabion mesh are straightforward, leading to significant time and cost savings.

Various Applications of Woven Gabion

As a cost-effective and relatively simple solution, woven gabion is suitable for different sizes, designs, and purposes, making it the preferred choice for many professional engineers and gardening enthusiasts.  In hydraulic engineering, woven gabion basket can be used for riverbank protection, dam protection, riverbed regulation, etc. In geological conservation, it can be applied to slope protection, rock stabilization, landslide control, and more.  Infrastructure construction benefits from its usage in slope protection for roads, railway safeguarding, and bridge preservation. In ecological environmental construction, it can be utilized for river ecological restoration, slope vegetation restoration, and more.

Step-by-Step Woven Gabion Installation Guide

Like other construction materials and projects, ensuring the secure and stable installation of gabion is always a top priority.  Whether you are a professional engineer, a distributor providing gabion solutions, or a gardening expert, this article will provide you with detailed installation steps and key considerations for woven gabion basket.

Prepare the Woven Gabion Basket

Before starting the installation, gather all the materials and tools needed for gabion installation. This includes the compressed gabion mesh received from your supplier, along with the provided binding wire.  Other items include tools like binding hook, ruler and micrometer, and protective gloves. Here, we are demonstrating a set of woven gabion basket with dimensions of 2 meters x 1 meter x 1 meter, and wire diameter of 2.7mm.

Unfold the Woven Gabion

Now, let’s unfold the four sides and cover of the woven gabion basket to prepare for the installation work ahead. We can notice that the gabion basket consists of a bottom panel, four side panels, a cover lid, and a middle partition. Therefore, installing the woven gabion basket is quite simple. We just need to connect the four sides, the partition, and the cover.

Installation with Cooperation

Now, it’s time to secure everything with binding wire. For a smooth installation, we recommend collaborating with 2 people. Have 1 person hold the gabion mesh panel sides and partition steady, while another person secures the woven gabion basket with binding wire.

Install Cover Plates

Once all gabion mesh panels are securely in place, you can add the stones. Pop on the gabion basket cover lid and secure it using the same double stranded binding wire method. Congratulations, you’ve successfully installed a 2m X 1m X 1m woven gabion basket. Isn’t that simple.

7 Must-Know Pro Tips for Installing Woven Gabion

What Should I Check The Woven Gabion?

First thing first, let’s measure the hexagonal gabion basket wire diameter, wire mesh hole opening, ensuring that the gabion mesh size and wire diameter match the design specifications. This is crucial for guaranteeing stability and tensile strength. In the meanwhile, it’s important to inspect the surface treatment of the gabion mesh. The zinc quantity and quality of the galvanized wire mesh play a crucial role in determining its corrosion resistance and overall longevity.

How to Tie Gabion Baskets?

Some customers have mentioned concerns about the amount of provided binding wire. The key lies in the binding method. We highly recommend using double-stranded binding wire for a secure connection. Cut the gabion wire roll to 25cm long binding wire, fold it in half at both ends, thread it through the two-intersection gabion mesh panel, use the binding hook to revolve the double-stranded binding wire to secure. You can also check how to make this in our previous video or on YouTube. This not only ensures stability of gabion basket but also speeds up the installation process. For each intersection, secure the two gabion mesh panel in every 25 cm. 

Does Gabion Mesh Require a Foundation?

Compared to traditional walls, one of the main advantages of a gabion mesh wall is that it does not require a conventional foundation. Most gabion retaining walls do not need a concrete foundation. Generally, a compacted layer of filler (such as crushed stone) is sufficient to provide a solid foundation for the gabion basket. While there is no requirement for a foundation, placing the gabion mesh on a flat and stable surface is imperative.  Once filled, the gabion basket becomes very heavy. For example, a cubic meter of gabion box requires about 1.7 tons of rocks to fill, meaning there must be a solid surface underneath the gabion.  In slope protection structures, the sides of the gabion wall can also be fitted with geotextile fabric that meets requirements. Depending on the height of the gabion wall, for walls not exceeding 1 meter in height, we recommend using compacted hard core foundation of around 10mm. For taller walls up to approximately 3 meters, we suggest laying a layer of 50-100mm gravel cushion. The gravel cushion should be evenly laid with staggered joints layer by layer.

How to Secure Gabion Wall?

For gabion installed next to or above finished gabion, tie the binding wire along the frame or lower frame of the newly installed gabion to the adjacent gabion, connecting the gabion baskets into a cohesive whole.  During construction, the gabion layers can be slightly tilted backward between 6 to 10 degrees according to the slope. Unlike stacking one gabion mesh basket of the same size on top of another to form a flat wall, this stepped design provides a more stable structure for the gabion mesh wall. Such a gabion wall will be more stable than a completely vertical gabion wall.

What is the Fastest Way to Fill Gabion?

While we’re demonstrating manual stone placement here, if you are installing for larger projects, it’s better using machinery for efficient stone filling. Fill a portion with machinery, then manually place stones to minimize gaps. Simultaneously uniformly feed filling material into each box of the same layer, keeping the thickness of each layer below 30cm. After partially filling, manually place stones to minimize gaps between them.  Any gaps will increase the risk of gabion wall movement, affecting the safety of your  gabion project. Typically, for 1 meter high gabion boxes, material is filled in four times. Fill the top with stones slightly above the gabion box, and manually or mechanically stack and level the exposed filling stones. In the end, the entire gabion basket is compact, with filling stones interlocking and any remaining gaps filled with small stones.

How to Prevent Woven Gabion Basket from Bulging?

In addition to using double-strand wire binding for fixation, we also recommend using supports as an additional safety measure. Supporting is crucial for the long-term integrity of the gabion wall. Bulging not only affects aesthetics but also causes unevenness in the gabion wall, increasing the risk of rapid wear and even collapse. Cross-binding wire in opposing directions on the front and back, as well as left and right sides of the woven gabion basket. This can effectively strengthen your gabion basket project. Installing supports during basket assembly helps prevent the sides of the basket from bulging outward, allowing the gabion wall to maintain its shape and strength for a longer time. 

What is the Best Stone Material for Filling Gabion?

Not all stones are equal when it comes to filling gabion basket. Firstly, the stones must be hard, not prone to weathering, free from cracks, and of a type not affected by frost.  Permeable rocks will rapidly weather due to freeze-thaw action. Weathered rocks can compromise the stability of the structure, and smaller stones may fall out of the gabion mesh opening. After the number of filling stones decreases, the stability of the gabion wall decreases. Ideally, interlocking angular stones are best for filling gabion box. The surface of the stones should be free from impurities such as dirt and rust. The stone density should be greater than 25kN/m3, and compressive strength should be greater than 60MPa. The diameter of the stones should be above 20cm to prevent them from slipping through the mesh holes of the gabion basket.

Conclusion

Now you have been learning all the woven gabion installation guide step-by-step, and some more pro tips. If you have other concerns about gabion basket assembly and installation, you can always reach out for our gabion specialists.