Building a new retaining wall or replacing an old or failing retaining wall can seem like a daunting task for homeowners.
When a retaining wall becomes necessary, we can guide you through the process so you can have your backyard looking like new again, as quickly as possible. With a brand new custom retaining wall that is guaranteed to last.
What To Expect When Building A Retaining Wall
There are a few steps and City of Calgary permits you will need to get before you can start building. There are a few ways you can go about getting your permits, but we believe getting the engineer involved as soon as possible is the best course of action. We’ll make sure you have everything you need to get through permitting as quickly as possible. If you run into any issues, we will have your back and make the necessary revisions to get your project underway as soon as possible.
We can help you pick what kind of retaining wall blocks are best suited to your home and site conditions, put you in contact with one of our trusted Calgary custom retaining wall builders, and help you with the layout.
- Contact us through our request a quote page.
- Wait for us to get back to you. It should only be a few minutes!
- Enjoy a free consultation where we will ask you what you’re looking for in your new retaining wall and help you with block type, backfill, and other technical information
- We will provide pricing for a set of engineered retaining walls plans, which are necessary for permitting.
- If you find the pricing acceptable, we will produce the plans within a couple of weeks and put you in contact with one or several of our most trusted retaining wall builders.
- Feel free to take our plans to any Calgary retaining wall builders to get pricing. We just suggest our favourite builders because we know they’re great at what they do!
- Once you have a builder, and the necessary permits have been obtained, we will communicate with the builder and iron out any issues that they may have
- Construction begins
- We will perform engineering inspections and materials testing during construction to ensure the wall is built to our specifications
- Once the wall is completed we will perform a final inspection and provide a retaining wall compliance letter as a final guarantee
Why Retaining Wall Blocks Matter
More goes into planning a retaining wall than just looks. Certain blocks are better suited to different tasks. Depending on the size of your wall and the wall’s proximity to any property lines, we may suggest a different sized blocks to give you more yard space, or to save you some money. We will lay out the advantages of each block, and give you a few to choose from. We wil only recommend blocks that can meet the engineering challenges on your site, so your selection can be based entirely on aesthetics.
What Makes Up A Retaining Wall
Once you have a copy of the construction drawings, you will see the easy to understand cross-section we provide with all of our designs. The cross-section will show every component of the wall from the block type, to the soil used for backfill, length of reinforcing geogrid and the type of material used for drainage. See below for a sample of what your retaining wall plans may look like.
Interested in a Custom Retaining Wall?
I hope this article has answered some questionso of your questions about retaining walls. If you need any more help or would like to request a quote, feel free to contact us and one of our professional engineers located in Calgary or Edmonton will help you out!