When it comes to choosing which dead weights to use for the really heavy duties in the garden, the question is inevitably asked: are concrete sleepers better than timber? This is not an easy decision to make, because both have their own good points, so let’s take a look at the various considerations individually, and you can make up your own mind, depending on what exactly your project is.
One major point to consider is weight, which is the reason why we use railway sleepers for garden purposes in the first place. It is also why they were developed in their original field: because they are heavy and once they have been laid, they stay put. When you’ve got trains thundering overhead, they are guided by the rails but are relying for their stability on the sleepers.
These unmoving, non-reactive lumps were called sleepers in the first place because that is what they appear to be doing: lying there in the deepest of slumbers. They might have been dubbed corpses instead, but for the negative connotations of that word. When we talk about a “dead weight” we often don’t mean it in a positive way, but a sleeping body is in good, or at least functional, condition. It’s not decaying, and it is going to be in the same state in the morning as it was the night before.
So, sleepers are good things. They are dependable, and that is what you want in garden applications too.
What is the Best Base for Railway Sleepers?
In the early days of the railways, wood and metal were the main building materials, apart from stone, which may have been deemed too expensive to use as this kind of immovable foundation. Or too difficult to work with, perhaps, because sleepers are neat, symmetrical objects and in a rail track they needed to be perfectly flat to do their job.
When sleepers began to be used in gardens, then, wood was the only option. The arrival of concrete as a building material came after that time. Although there is evidence that concrete was invented thousands of years ago, it was not in the convenient form we think of today, and ready-mix concrete didn’t become available until 1913.
Concrete had to earn the trust of the builders and the public, which happened gradually as the 20th century wore on. In 1935 the Hoover Dam in the US demonstrated that concrete was reliable, and the builders got plenty of practice, with five million barrels of Portland cement and 4.5 million cubic yards of aggregate used in its construction.
Meanwhile, reinforced concrete had been developed but not really taken off. It was first used in high-rise buildings in the early 1960s.
Timber companies didn’t even know there was competition around the corner, and the world’s railways went ahead thanks to logging, which at the time was not considered harmful to the planet, because the human race was blissfully ignorant of such things.
Concrete eventually came to the aid of the construction industry and the earth in general, but it was regarded as ugly in comparison with good old wood.
That didn’t worry the railway companies, and anyway, nobody was looking at what was underneath the rails. Much the same is true of concrete’s use in gardens.
One factor in the debate, which is better, concrete or wooden railway sleepers, then, is appearance, and while wood has a natural charm, concrete has to be helped in the cosmetic stakes. However, this is certainly possible, mainly through textured finishes but also through colour, because dye can be added at the mixing stage, to produce more attractive tones than plain old grey. You can have a whole range of earth tones, the sort of green and yellow and brown and red shades that are found in nature, where the palettes are subtle. And yes, trees are included in that, in their natural bark-clad state and their naked condition, stripped, sawn and planed. If there has to be a winner in the beauty competition, perhaps we should concede that wood takes the sash.
Performance: Concrete vs Wood Sleepers
When we talk about performance in this context, it’s not so much about what the two contestants do, but about what they don’t do. Both are hugely strong, but one is almost impervious to decay, while the other is not. Concrete doesn’t rot, doesn’t warp and doesn’t get attacked by insects. Even the toughest hardwood eventually suffers from all those things, including being munched by termites.
How long do treated pine sleepers last? It varies according to the conditions prevalent in your neck of the woods. Maybe 25 years if you’re lucky. Is that long enough to serve the purpose you want them for? For edging and purely decorative use, perhaps. But for weight-bearing, particularly holding up large quantities of soil, as retaining walls do, gradual decline means a gradual reduction of safety. How long do concrete sleepers last? No-nonsense, low-maintenance concrete could last twice as long as timber, so in the durability stakes concrete gets the vote.
Weight and the Cost of Installation
There is also the question of weight as regards convenience and ease of use, and here wood has the advantage. A certain amount of weight is necessary, but a substantial wooden sleeper is a lot easier to handle and position than a concrete one. Extra weight means heavier machinery to transport the sleepers, to load them and unload them. That will be included in the price you’re quoted for the job, but on the face of it it’s another plus point for wood.
If Price is Your Bottom Line
Moving on to cost, there are varieties to look at. Treated pine sleepers cost less but are relatively soft and light. They will also need maintenance, the cost of which has to be taken into consideration. Who wants to have to think about maintenance with something like this, anyway? It’s the sort of infrastructure that we like to have installed once and forget about. But wood needs to be monitored, inspected and dealt with as necessary.
The result is that the initial relatively low cost of wooden sleepers is misleading. In addition to that, super-durable hardwoods often come from exotic locations, rainforests which most people agree we should not be touching. But as dense and unflinching as they might be, they won’t outlast concrete.
What Are the Disadvantages of Concrete Sleepers?
Looking at the findings of the previous paragraphs, the disadvantages of concrete sleepers are fairly few and a matter of opinion anyway. Concrete may not be naturally good looking, but it can be made to look perfectly at home in a garden setting, and with a little weathering (which in concrete’s case is not the same as damage, while with wood it could be seen as early-stage trouble), concrete retaining walls and fences can look great.
There is a lot to think about, so the best idea would be to talk to an expert or two. Do you want your garden to be one of the best features of your property and remain so for future generations, or will those generations have to spend another load of cash on it?
Yes, concrete can cost a little more initially, but once it’s done it is there for the duration, so the relative cost reduces over the years. In a choice such as this, it is important to take a pragmatic, unsentimental approach, and that means, if you are looking purely at the long term, forgetting the romantic charms of wood and going for the indisputable, fact-based reality that concrete will make the best use of your money.