Concrete Retaining Walls in Orinda CA - Hold back the hill and let the water out

Most folks who call me have dirt washing onto a walk, an old wall tipping forward, or a flat spot they want cut into the hill. The price mostly turns on how tall and long the wall is, how much digging and hauling it takes, whether a truck or pump can reach the spot, and how much drain rock and pipe goes behind it. The schedule turns on permits and city review, the weather, and curing, which is the wait while the concrete hardens before we push dirt back against it. My written estimate spells out what's included, so you can see what your own slope will take.

A wall is only as good as the drainage behind it, so the drain rock and the outlet get as much of our attention as the concrete. We dig down to firm ground for the footing, the wide concrete base the wall stands on, then set rebar, the steel bars that let the wall carry the push of the dirt, and build the forms. After the pour and the cure, we lay a toe drain, a perforated pipe along the base of the wall, bed it in clean drain rock, run it to an outlet where the water can leave the yard, and make sure the weep holes are clear before we backfill. One comparison guide says block and poured walls both fail from water before anything else, which is why it calls the drainage the real structure, so if you're comparing bids, it's fair to ask each contractor how their plan handles the stone, the toe drain and the outlet.

A wall usually comes with other work, because the reason to hold back a slope is often to get flat ground. If the wall makes room for a pool, we can pour the concrete pool deck on the new level, and when a wall doubles as the back of a garage or room built into the hill, we handle the concrete floor installation inside it too.

In Orinda, building permits come from the Contra Costa County Building Department, and a retaining wall more than 3 feet tall needs one. The city also lists retaining walls among the work its Planning Department reviews, and county guidance says a wall built on fill needs a grading permit as well, so a taller wall can pass through more than one office. When your wall needs a permit, we can pull it as your contractor and handle the paperwork and inspection calls for our part of the work, and if an engineer or architect is drawing the wall, we build from their plans and stay in touch with them. I check with the right office on your job before we start rather than guess, and you can see where the process begins on the city's building permits page.

Plenty of yards here sit on a slope, and the walls we're called about usually hold up a driveway cut, a patio or a narrow side yard with no room to lay the hill back. We're based in Orinda and work in cities all around it on both sides of the hills, and we plan the outlet first on the steep lots we see on wall jobs in Moraga and Lafayette too.