Slope slumping or an old wall starting to lean? We'll tell you which wall your yard needs, then build it to let water out.
Concrete retaining walls in Lafayette, CA are poured-in-place walls built to hold back the ground on a slope, so you get usable flat yard and soil that stays where it belongs.
Most calls start with something you can see. An old timber or block wall has started to lean, soil slides onto the patio after a wet winter, or the hill leaves you with very little flat yard. A poured wall is a structural wall built to hold its ground, and a common kind is the reinforced cantilever wall, a fairly thin upright stem standing on a concrete base slab.
The price moves mostly with the wall's height and length, how much soil has to be dug out and hauled away, how easily the concrete truck can reach the spot and what the drainage behind the wall needs. The schedule turns on which offices have to sign off, on any engineer's work the city asks for and on dry weather for digging and pouring. Your written estimate gives you the figure for your own wall.
Thank you for thinking of us. Here is how it goes from your first call to a finished wall, and who you'll be dealing with at each step.
I learned this work on concrete crews during summers in school and started Bedrock Lafayette Concrete in 2023, and I still come out to see every job myself. I take measurements and listen to what you have in mind before I write anything down.
You get the estimate in writing, and we go over your choices together so you can decide what suits your yard and budget. We also walk through the permit steps for your wall, so nothing comes as a surprise once work starts.
During the work I'm on site with our crew, and we look over the finished wall with you before we call it done. We're fully licensed and insured, and in California the state licensing board's concrete classification covers the forming, pouring and finishing a wall like this involves.
With a retaining wall, the first thing I look at is whether your site needs a poured structural wall at all, because a dry-laid wall of stacked material with open joints costs much less, and I'll tell you plainly if that would do the job. When a poured wall is the right call, we plan for water to get out from behind it before we set a single form, since trapped water is what pushes walls over. If the budget gets tight, the base and the drainage are the last places I'd cut, even though a nicer face finish is easier to see, because they're buried the day we backfill and fixing them later means taking the wall apart.
A wall usually makes room for something, so the work often carries on from there. The level ground it creates is a natural spot for concrete pool decks, and our concrete floor installation work covers the slab for a shed or workshop on the new flat area.
A wall depends on the parts you won't see once it's backfilled, so that's where most of our time goes.
We stake the line of the wall and check where water runs across your yard today, so the drainage behind the wall sends it somewhere harmless and not toward the house.
We dig down past the loose topsoil and compact the material the wall will stand on, because a wall settles and tips with whatever is under it.
We tie the rebar, the steel bars that let the stem and the base slab work as one piece, and set forms to hold the shape. We pour in the cooler part of the day when we can, since concrete that dries too fast in the heat ends up weaker on the surface.
Curing is the waiting time while concrete gains strength, and we let the wall cure before any soil goes against it. Then we backfill behind it with the drainage in place and clean up the site.
Send us the property address and a rough length and height for the wall, and we'll get back to you within one business day to set a time for me to come out. Estimates from Bedrock Lafayette Concrete are free, done on site and come with no pressure to book.
(925) 298-0707A retaining wall in the Bay Area usually costs about $50 to $65 per square foot, as a general figure for the whole region. That's the market's going rate, not our price, and your written estimate gives the figure for your own wall. Every wall we build carries the same promise as the rest of our work. Your satisfaction, guaranteed.
Contra Costa County handles building permits for Lafayette, and its code exempts only retaining walls not over 3 feet high on gently sloping ground. In Lafayette the process starts with an online zoning plan check by the City of Lafayette Planning Department, so the county and the city are the offices to ask for a ruling on your own wall. We help you work out which offices your wall goes through, and we handle the permit paperwork with you as part of the job.
Most retaining walls fail because water or soil moisture builds up behind them and presses on the wall. General guidance says every wall should let that water drain down and away, and it suggests asking whether a quote uses gravel backfill or drainage blankets and drain pipes. I'm glad to walk you through how the water will leave your wall when we go over the estimate.
It can, because the city requires a Hillside Development Permit for development in its Hillside Overlay District. That district covers ridgeline, hillside and other rural residential areas, so only some Lafayette properties fall inside it, and the city can tell you whether yours does.
Many of the walls people call us about here hold back a sloped backyard or the bank beside a driveway, and on those lots the digging adds up quickly. Lafayette requires a Grading Permit to move more than 50 cubic yards of soil on a property, and the city counts what's dug out plus what's filled in, so a long wall with leveled ground behind it can reach that amount sooner than you might expect.
On some projects, the city's decision makers may require the project's geotechnical engineer, an engineer who studies the ground, to certify that the project is suitable, based on studies that include a look at the soil below the surface. If your lot looks like it needs that kind of study, I'll tell you so, because those questions belong with an engineer and the city. We're based in Lafayette and work throughout the East Bay, in Lafayette and many of the cities around it, including Orinda, Moraga and Walnut Creek.
Call (925) 298-0707 or attach them to the form, since a few pictures let me arrive already knowing what your slope and the ground around it look like.
Thank you for reading, and if you'd like to talk through your slope before deciding anything, I'm glad to listen.
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