Services·Sacramento
Garden & Retaining Walls
A wall is a drainage problem before it is a stone problem.
Retaining walls fail from water, not weight. Soil behind a wall holds rain, the pressure builds where it cannot escape, and the wall leans out slowly enough that nobody notices until it is too far gone.
So we build the back of the wall as carefully as the face. Drainage stone behind it, a pipe at the base with somewhere to go, and backfill placed in lifts. The face is set with a slight lean into the slope, because a wall that starts out plumb is already losing.
Garden walls that hold nothing back are a different job entirely, and the pleasure of those is in the coping and the line.
How it goes in
- 01
Reading the slope
Where the water goes now, and where it will go once the wall is there.
- 02
Footing
Trench cut below grade and compacted so the first course starts on something solid.
- 03
Courses and drainage
Wall built up with drainage stone and pipe behind it, backfilled in lifts.
- 04
Coping
Cap set to line. This is the part everyone touches, so it gets the time it needs.