Concrete retaining walls in Saratoga CA - a wall built and drained for your slope

Most people call us when a bank is slumping onto the lawn, a path has started to tip, or they want a flat spot for a patio or new concrete steps where the yard falls away. The price moves with the wall's height and length, how much dirt has to come out, the footing and steel your slope calls for, the drainage behind it, and whether an old wall has to come out first. The schedule mostly turns on what the city wants to look at for your lot, the weather, and giving the concrete time to cure, which is the wait while it hardens before we fill the soil back in behind it. I'll give you your own figure once I've walked the slope with you.

I don't size a wall by its height alone, because two walls the same height can be holding back very different loads. When I come out, I look at the slope, the soil, where the water runs across the lot and what sits above the wall, like a driveway or a patio, and then we plan the footing, which is the wide base under the wall, the rebar, which is the steel inside that takes the push, and the drainage behind it for your ground. Our crew digs the footing down to firm soil and packs it, sets the forms and steel, and pours. Behind the wall we lay drainage gravel and a perforated pipe, and we leave drain outlets where you can reach them and check them over the years. When a budget gets tight, the footing and drainage are what people want to trim first since nobody sees them, and that's where I'll push back, because a plain wall on the right footing that drains well is worth more than a fancy face on a short one.

A wall often comes with other work around it. Once the slope is held back, plenty of owners use the new flat ground for a studio or workshop, and we can handle the concrete floor installation for it, and on lots with a pool, a wall can make room for wider concrete pool decks. We plan those together with the wall so the water behind it and the slab beside it don't work against each other.

Saratoga decides which yard work needs its review, and the answer for a wall can depend on where it sits on your lot, so we don't guess for you. We check early on what the city wants for your job, and when a permit applies, we handle the contractor's side and help you with the parts that fall to you as the owner. Applications in Saratoga go through the city's online permit system, eTrakit, where you can apply, track where things stand and trade documents with the city. If you're still at the idea stage, the city points owners to its Planning Division as the first stop when adding structures to a yard.

We're based in Saratoga and work across the cities around it, and a lot of the yards we see here sit on hillsides or run down toward a creek, which is why I look at the soil and the water before we talk about height. One easy thing you can do at home first is put your address into the state's EQ Zapp map, which shows whether your property is in a mapped earthquake hazard zone or in an area the state hasn't evaluated yet. We meet the same steep lots on jobs in Los Gatos and Cupertino.