Mattress Gabion

What Is a Mattress Gabion and What Does It Solve?

The mattress gabion is a stone-filled cage made from 2.7 mm galvanized wire, with an 8x10 cm mesh aperture and a body just 30 cm deep. Think of it as the slim-section brother of the box gabion: it is built on the same principle and filled with stone in the same way, but because the body depth is low it uses far less stone and closes a far longer run for the same budget.

This product is the answer for anyone who wants to mark out a land boundary without ending up with the look of a wire fence. Common applications: boundary walls for fields, vineyards and orchards, a natural stone look boundary around villas and housing estates, landscaping and terrace edge kerbs, slope face cladding, infill panels between posts, dividers for car parks and walkways, and light surface protection along stream banks. Where local stone is available nearby, the fill also brings the haulage cost down.

Where 30 cm Depth Is Enough and Where It Is Not

This is the most critical question about the product, and the honest answer is this: the 30 cm depth is designed for boundary and surface work, not for resisting the thrust of the soil behind it. If you are holding back a slope with a change in level, building a retaining wall with backfill behind it, or forming a toe directly exposed to running water, the section is not enough; that is where you have to move up to the deeper box type.

For free-standing boundary walls with no load behind them, for garden kerbs built on levelled ground, for applications that clad the face of an existing slope and for wind and screening walls, 30 cm is the ideal section. It builds three times the length for the same budget and cuts the stone requirement by more than half. There is a sensible limit on height too; keeping slim-section walls to a single course, that is to around 1 metre, and bracing the back with posts where necessary, is the soundest approach.

200 cm or 300 cm? Choosing the Size

Both sizes are 100 cm high and 30 cm deep; the only difference is the length. 300x100x30 is the size for straight, long runs: fewer cages are tied per metre, and because there are fewer tie points both the labour and the risk of a joint opening up go down. This is the first choice for field boundaries, long garden frontages and straight roadsides.

200x100x30 makes the work easier wherever the line changes shape: corners, gentle curves, either side of gate and access openings, and stepped seating on sloping ground. In practice the most efficient method is to use the two together; closing the straight sections quickly with the 300 and finishing the leftover gaps and turns with the 200 brings cutting and waste down to almost nothing.

Technical Specifications

How Many Gabions and How Much Stone? A Worked Example

The quantity calculation is simple: quantity = line length / cage length, with the result rounded up. Stone is worked out with volume = length x height x 0.30 and stone weight = volume x approximately 1.5 tonnes/m³. The coefficient varies between 1.4-1.6 tonnes/m³ depending on the type of stone, so confirming it with the quarry keeps the order from drifting.

Example: a land boundary wall 60 metres long and 1 metre high is to be built. With the 300x100x30 size, quantity = 60 / 3 = 20 cages. Fill volume = 60 x 1 x 0.30 = 18 m³, and the stone requirement is 18 x 1.5 = about 27 tonnes. Had the same run been built with 200x100x30, 30 cages would have been needed; the amount of stone does not change, but the tying labour rises noticeably.

If the run is a length that does not divide exactly, 62 metres for instance, a combination of 20 of the 300 and 1 of the 200 covers 62 metres precisely. Where a gate is going into the entrance, the gate width is deducted from the run; for openings in a boundary wall, fixing the field gate size at the outset and dividing the gabion run to suit gives the cleanest result.

Ground Preparation and Installation Steps

1. Mark the line out with a string, strip the topsoil, then level and compact the base. On slim-section walls, settlement faults almost always start at the base.
2. Where needed, lay and compact a 10-15 cm bed of crushed stone; on sloping ground the base is stepped down in stages.
3. Open the cages out and tie the corners by spiral-wrapping galvanized wire around them, keeping the tie spacing at 10-15 cm.
4. Stitch neighbouring cages to each other along the vertical joint as well; cages that are not tied together will not behave as a wall.
5. Fill the visible face by hand-placing the stone and complete the interior by tipping. In a 30 cm section the coursing of the front face decides the whole appearance.
6. At roughly one third of the height, fit internal braces tying the opposing faces together; bulging is the most common defect on slim-section gabions.
7. Close the lid and tie it along the edge, then reinforce the end-of-run and corner cages with extra ties.

Mattress Gabion, Box Gabion and Panel Fence

All three products create a boundary, but they do different jobs. Box gabion builds mass with its 50 and 100 cm depth options; it is the product for soil retention, retaining structures, stream banks and anywhere a tall wall is needed. The mattress type gives the same appearance with far less stone, over a far longer run and at a lower cost; but it carries no load.

Panel fence makes the comparison even clearer: panel fence goes up faster, needs no stone and costs less; the mattress gabion delivers a natural stone appearance, a visual barrier, wind screening and permanence. If simply marking the boundary is enough, panel fence is the sensible option. If the boundary also has to be a surface, a landscaping element, then gabion is the choice. On many projects the two are used together: gabion at the lower level with fence above it.

Service Life, Maintenance and the Cost of the Wrong Choice

Galvanized coating slows corrosion down; in dry ground conditions the maintenance requirement is very low. Once a year, check the tie points, the lid ties and any bulging on the front face. Clearing the vegetation that builds up at the foot of the wall stops moisture sitting permanently against the wire. Topping up the stone from above as it settles keeps the fill tight; that top-up at the end of the first year largely puts an end to any further settlement in later years. If an irrigation line or rainwater discharges at the foot of the wall, diverting the flow away from the run is another simple measure that extends service life.

The most expensive form of the wrong choice is using a mattress gabion in place of a retaining wall: the soil thrust behind it pushes the slim section forward, the wall leans and the run has to be taken down and rebuilt. The second common mistake is using stone smaller than the mesh aperture; the stone falls through, the mass empties and the surface collapses. The third is filling without fitting internal braces, and the result is a wall with a belly on it. The cost of all three mistakes lies not in the material but in the labour of rebuilding.

What Determines the Price, and How Do Delivery and Site Survey Work?

On the mattress gabion the items that set the price are the cage size, the wire diameter, the amount of galvanized coating, the order quantity and the current cost of steel raw material. Choosing the long size lowers the tying labour per metre; on shaped runs the short size reduces waste. All the figures shown in the price table on this page include VAT, and the fill stone is not included in the price.

Our Ostim, Ankara based company sells products and ships them across Turkey; because the cages are dispatched folded flat, long runs can be carried in a single load. Delivery is always charged — this applies to deliveries within Ankara as well, and the haulage cost is added to the order separately. On projects within Ankara, site survey is free of charge: the run is measured and the number of cages, the stone requirement and the amount of tying wire are set out in writing. Installation is not one of our standard services; our teams attend projects of approximately 1000 metres and above.